Introducing AccelerateIP: A BC funding program available to support IP development

We are excited to introduce you to AccelerateIP, a program led by New Ventures BC designed to support tech startups in developing their intellectual property (IP) strategies. Understanding and leveraging IP is crucial for protecting your innovations, differentiating your brand, and creating new revenue streams. In this article, we provide an overview of IP basics, highlight the importance of IP for your business, and explain how the AccelerateIP program can help you maximize your IP potential and business.

AccelerateIP allows you to apply for up to $85,000 to cover legal costs, with DLA Piper (Canada) LLP as a registered legal service provider available to assist you in developing and implementing your IP strategy.

Creating an IP strategy is one of the more useful ways for technology startups to concentrate their efforts in the early days, but as founders know all too well, time is often scarce as you don the many hats of employer, manager, builder, marketer, seller, and fundraiser. This package aims to provide you with baseline information for protecting your IP, why it may be beneficial for you, and how you can take advantage of the AccelerateIP program with support from DLA Piper.

Intellectual property basics

Major heads of IP:

• Patents: Patents are registered rights that grant the patent holder a temporary monopoly over a new, useful and non-obvious invention in exchange for its public disclosure and promoting innovation while benefitting society as a whole to advance technology once the monopoly ends. Find out more about patents and when they should be used.


• Trademarks: Trademarks distinguish goods and services of one entity from another, allowing the public to easily identify your business from competitors. They can include any words, designs, tastes, textures, moving images, ‎mode of packaging, holograms, sounds, scents, three-dimensional shapes, ‎colours, or a combination of these. Find out more about trademarks.


• Copyright: Copyright protects the expression of ideas, covering original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, and provides the sole right to produce, reproduce and distribute these works or any substantial part thereof. Find out more about copyright.


• Industrial designs and design patents: These registrations protect the ornamental and aesthetic features of a design, granting a temporary monopoly over the design for the period of the registration.


• Confidential information and trade secrets: Confidential information is any information that has commercial value derived from the fact that the information is secret, such as internal processes, client lists, training data, research and development, computer code, etc. While some confidential information, such as patent applications for research, may be registered, other types, such as client lists, may not be and would retain value only to the extent it is kept confidential. Find out more about trade secrets.

Why is IP important to your business?

• Share or asset sale: IP rights make up a key component of the assets of a tech based or tech enabled business. They can be sold as specific assets in an asset sale, or as part of the ongoing rights of a company in a share acquisition, which may include licensing and distribution rights. Creating valuable IP that provides value to an underlying business helps founders attract investors and ultimately exit opportunities, enabling them to move on to new ventures once their startup has received a certain level of growth and success. Other entrepreneurs may make a business itself of developing IP to sell to other operating businesses.

   

• Internally leveraging IP to grow your brand: Internally leveraging your IP means finding additional ways to generate revenues from your existing IP. To do this you need to identify your company’s distinctive qualities that continuously bring people back to your product instead of other, similar products. Many startups will find it is a combination of their brand name, which is almost always trademarked, and customer loyalty that can be leveraged in various ways.

   

• Externally leveraging IP through licensing or distribution: Externally leveraging your IP means allowing third parties to use your IP rights in exchange for a fee. For many companies their name or a product name may be their most valuable asset and they will license their trademarks or patents to others in exchange for royalties or offer products or services for ongoing subscription fees. This may provide an additional revenue stream for your business or support the sale of products and services.

   

• Barrier to entry: Registered IP rights provide a strong deterrent to and enforcement mechanism against any potential competitors from entering a space in which you hold exclusive rights or from copying and utilizing your IP without a license to do so.

What can you do to protect and exploit your IP? Explore these additional articles for more details:

• Strategic Use of IP
• Scope, Fees, IP, Relief: Mastering the Elements of Good Licensing
• Intellectual property rights for tech startups
• Monetizing intellectual property rights for food startups

About AccelerateIP

AccelerateIP is an integrated IP capacity-building program designed to support startups in British Columbia (BC), Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. The program is a three-year initiative that focuses on clean tech, health tech, and data tech startups, though its mandate is relatively broad in what it considers to be “tech” and is more focussed on helping startups plan, refine, and develop their IP strategies. AccelerateIP is run through New Ventures BC and the product of $12.5 million in federal funding, expected to be deployed to support over 600 startups in the supported regions.

AccelerateIP offers three streams, which are broken out to allow customizable learning and assistance and are focussed on teaching entrepreneurs about the value of IP and how to best invest in their relevant IP strategies. The three streams are:

• Stream 1: Education and Awareness. Provides foundational IP training through online educational modules, in-person and online webinars, and an in-depth IP certification program for startups led by IP experts.

   

• Stream 2-1: Mentorship. Offers 1:1 mentorship with a partner organization in the program, such as Spring, if you are still considering how IP fits into your business or you are not yet ready to approach a legal support provider.


• Stream 2-2: Build IP Strategy. Covers up to $25,000 in eligible legal strategy development costs. Eligible activities include (but are not limited to):
  • IP audits, budget reviews, competitive analyses, strategy, and portfolio valuations;
  • analysis of IP landscaping;
  • preparation of common contracts and document templates, i.e. employment agreements, contractor agreements, IP assignment or transfer agreements or NDAs;
  • freedom to operate or infringement searches;
  • legal contractual analyses, i.e. commercialization of IP opportunities;
  • out-licensing strategy development;
  • patentability analyses;
  • prior art searches; and
  • trademark and branding strategies and clearance searches.
  
  
• Stream 3: Implement IP Strategy. Provides financial support to cover up to $60,000 in eligible legal implementation costs. Eligible activities include (but are not limited to):
  • IP registration;
  • legal contractual drafting, i.e. commercialization of IP opportunities;
  • patent application;
  • patent registration;
  • trademark application;
  • trademark registration;
  • industrial design application;
  • industrial design registration; and
  • filing fees.
  
  
• To be eligible for AccelerateIP, you must meet the following requirements:
  • be a startup based in BC, Northwest Territories, Yukon or Nunavut;
  • use innovative technology and/or operate in the tech sector; and
  • have fewer than 500 employees.

If you meet the eligibility requirements, you can apply for and access the AccelerateIP program and its resources here.

For more details on AccelerateIP and the application process, visit the AccelerateIP Program Guidelines.

 

DLA Piper is a registered legal service provider

DLA Piper (Canada) LLP is a registered legal service provider under the AccelerateIP program, meaning that you can apply through AccelerateIP to have DLA Piper’s fees for eligible activities covered in Streams 2 and 3, being focussed on IP strategy and implementation respectively. AccelerateIP provides up to $85,000 across both streams to cover costs for legal support.

As a global law firm located in over 40 countries, our experienced and award-winning team of IP lawyers can assist you in developing and implementing targeted IP strategies to maximize your IP assets and set the stage for long-term success. Our team of business, commercial and IP experts provide both strategic commercial and registration, filing, and litigation-related advice to a wide range of industry sectors, supporting clients to achieve their objectives wherever they do business.

To have your legal IP and commercial needs under Streams 2 and 3 provided by DLA Piper and funded by AccelerateIP, apply through the program portal here.

For further information on accessing DLA Piper's services for AccelerateIP, please reach out to Morgan McDonald or Mike Reid.