IP Spotlight - December 2025

THE TOP 7 IP MISTAKES GENERAL COUNSEL MAKE (and How to Avoid Them)

Navigating intellectual property (IP) as General Counsel can be difficult. There are so many different forms of IP, each of which comes with its own complex set of rules and requirements. As IP professionals, we often see the same mistakes being made, from self-publishing inventions to inadvertently using copyright material. Rectifying these mistakes through litigation or a negotiated settlement is almost invariably expensive and time consuming, and sometimes impossible. Even more frustrating is the fact that most mistakes could easily have been avoided with a planning from the outset. In this article, we discuss some of the more common IP traps for General Counsel and ways to avoid them.

GENERATED IP 1

FORGETTING TO CAPTURE EMPLOYEE

Employees generate new IP all the time. They are constantly discovering new ways of doing things, making small but meaningful tweaks to products and processes and creating new works. If you are not capturing these, your business could be missing out on valuable IP assets and not fully capitalising on its investments. HOLD REGULAR CHECK-INS WITH TECHNICAL TEAMS AND EDUCATE STAFF ABOUT IP The volume of activity within a large organisation makes keeping tracking of and even identifying these innovations difficult. To improve your visibility – and your team’s focus on IP – you might consider holding regular meetings with technical staff, or their supervisors, to discuss

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