At Keltie, we help start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs develop a clear, practical intellectual property (IP) strategy that supports innovation, investment and long-term growth.
Many businesses know they need an IP strategy but are unsure where to begin or how to access the right advice in a cost-effective way. We will work with you to create a tailored approach that aligns your IP strategy with your business objectives and growth plans.
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Central to developing an effective IP strategy is understanding how your IP supports your business model: identifying what innovations, brands and know-how are core to your competitive advantage, and how they should be protected. This includes considering patents, trade marks, designs, copyright and trade secrets, and how these fit with your current business and aspirations.
It is important to decide where and when to invest in protection. Smaller businesses often need to balance limited budgets with ambitious growth plans. A well-structured IP strategy helps prioritise how available budget is spent to ensure resources are focused where they will deliver the greatest commercial benefit.
IP strategy should be developed to enable growth, investment and commercialisation. A clear and coherent IP strategy can strengthen your position with investors, support due diligence processes, and create opportunities for licensing, partnerships or future exit. The aim is not just to protect your ideas, but to use IP as a tool to drive business value.
An IP strategy is particularly valuable at key stages of growth. You may wish to develop or refine your IP strategy:
Having a clear IP strategy at these points can help reduce risk, avoid unnecessary costs, and ensure your IP supports your long-term objectives.
Developing an effective IP strategy requires more than simply identifying IP that exists within the business. It involves making informed, commercially driven decisions about what to protect, how to protect it, and when to act.
For many start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs, this can feel complex and difficult to prioritise, particularly without in-house IP expertise. Keltie’s attorneys are experienced in providing clear, practical guidance to help you navigate these decisions and build an IP strategy that is proportionate, targeted and aligned with your business goals.
As IP specialists, we work closely with founders, technical teams and leadership to understand your technology, your market and your commercial ambitions. The result is a tailored IP strategy that is aligned with your business strategy, ensuring that your IP strengthens your business and delivers value over time.
We understand that start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs face unique challenges including limited budgets, fast-moving development cycles and the need to realise value quickly.
Our approach is designed to provide:
We can also support ongoing involvement at board or leadership level where required, helping to ensure that IP remains aligned with your wider business strategy as you grow.
At Keltie, we take a commercially focused approach to IP strategy development. Our attorneys combine deep technical knowledge with real business insight to ensure your IP decisions support your wider objectives.
We take time to understand your technology, your market and your growth plans, asking the right questions to shape an IP strategy that works in practice. Our advice is clear, pragmatic and designed to deliver immediate value, while also supporting longer-term success.
Rather than a one-off exercise, we view IP strategy as an ongoing process. We work with you as your business evolves, adapting your IP strategy to ensure it continues to support your commercial success.
An IP strategy is a structured plan for identifying, protecting and using your IP in a way that supports your business objectives and creates commercial value.
Yes absolutely. Developing an IP strategy at an early stage helps ensure your key innovations are protected, supports investment and reduces the risk of costly issues later.
An IP audit focuses on understanding what IP you currently have, whereas an IP strategy sets out how you should protect, develop and use your IP to support your business strategy.
Costs will vary depending on the scope and complexity of your business. Keltie provides tailored, proportionate advice designed to deliver value at each stage of growth.
Looking for practical guidance on managing IP as your business grows? Download our free IP Guide for Start-ups for advice on protecting your innovations, avoiding common pitfalls and building an effective IP strategy.
Services you may be interested in
Decades of experience as attorneys, engineers and scientists in industry and research underpin the approach of our patent team. We are resolutely commercial and take time to understand your technology and your business.
Keltie’s patent attorneys are skilled not only in patent searching, but in interpreting the output of a patent search, and in helping you understand what it means for your technology and your business.
Why file a patent application? Patents can serve multiple purposes during their lifetime. They grant the owner a period to enjoy the exclusivity of their invention before others can use it. They give the owner powerful rights recognised in law to prevent infringement. But they are also valuable intellectual property which can enhance the ability of the owner to exploit their technology commercially through licensing or sale of the invention.
A key reason to invest in patent protection is to prevent others from copying your innovation. The patent system is intended to allow you, as a creator, to enjoy exclusivity around your technology for a set period of time. Patents allow you to leverage that exclusivity in order to develop your commercial position.
What is the Patent Box? Patent Box is a tax incentive scheme designed to encourage innovation within the UK. Introduced in 2013, it is a government-backed initiative whereby company profits which are derivable from patented technology are taxed at a lower rate than standard corporation tax. The system is intended to provide a strong and supportive environment for innovation within the UK.
The attorneys in our Trade Mark Group are among the leading brand protection experts in the UK and Europe. Through our associate network, we coordinate brand protection all over the world. The Group comprises multi-lingual European and UK trade mark attorneys with backgrounds in law, engineering and business. Their expertise extends through the full lifecycle, from searching and filing through to opposition and litigation, including enforcement and appeal. The Group also has vast experience in online enforcement.
Before you start using a trade mark, it is good practice to conduct a search to check that the trade mark is free to use. Conducting this type of search can be challenging because there are so many trade marks in use across many different fields of commerce. This makes it difficult for people without trade mark qualifications to navigate other brand-owners’ rights, and avoid or manage potential conflict.
How to file a trade mark The trade mark filing process can be relatively straightforward. In theory, all an applicant needs to do is access the relevant trade mark website, enter the word they wish to create a mark for, add the relevant goods and services to apply to the mark and pay the fee.
What is trade mark protection? Trade mark protection is a means of securing a monopoly right in a word, logo, shape, colour or sound that acts as an identifier of origin, allowing consumers to immediately determine the source of the goods or services offered under that particular trade mark or brand.
Registering a trade mark does not automatically prevent other parties from filing applications for identical or similar marks. In many countries, responsibility rests with the trade mark owner to identify conflicting applications and decide whether to act. In the UK and EU, for example, trade mark applications are not refused solely because they conflict with earlier trade marks. It is generally for the owners of those earlier rights to oppose conflicting applications.
Keltie's attorneys have an unusual wealth of expertise and experience in design rights. We help clients protect their designs, exploit their rights and mitigate risks.
If you are launching a new product there is a risk that it will infringe third party design rights. You can reduce the likelihood of costly conflict down the line, or at least be better informed of potential risk, by conducting a design search and clearance assessment before product launch. To do this, we search for relevant earlier rights - both registered and unregistered designs - help you assess the risk these pose to you, and guide you in any action that you might take to reduce and mitigate risk.
To protect your design with a registered right, a formal application must be made to the appropriate IP office. Obtaining a design registration is relatively quick (a matter of weeks or months in the EU and UK), which can be very useful for creators because it means rights and therefore protection can be granted swiftly.
As the owner of a design right, you are able to take action against another party if they market a product that is too visually similar to yours, without your permission. If their product is identical to your design, or if it differs in some ways but the impression the consumer takes from their product matches your design, you may be able to take action.
Intellectual property should support your business strategy, not operate separately from it. Keltie provides commercially focused IP strategy and consulting services to help businesses understand their intellectual property, make informed decisions and use their IP to support growth, investment and long-term commercial objectives.
An intellectual property (IP) audit helps you to understand what IP your business owns, how it is protected, and how it supports your technology, your products and your wider business strategy.
At Keltie we have considerable experience in reviewing and refining intellectual property (IP) strategies for businesses to help ensure that their IP approach remains relevant and aligned with their business strategy, operations and growth plans.
We help businesses prepare for mergers and acquisitions (M&A), providing IP portfolio analysis to help buyers, investors and advisers understand the intellectual property (IP) underpinning a transaction.
At Keltie, we help start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs develop a clear, practical intellectual property (IP) strategy that supports innovation, investment and long-term growth.
We help start-ups and scale-ups demonstrate how their intellectual property (IP) supports their business plan and investment proposition. We may be asked to do this by the company itself, or by an investor or potential investor.
Counterfeit products, copycat websites, impersonation accounts and other forms of online brand misuse can damage revenue, reputation and customer trust. Because harmful activity can spread rapidly across multiple platforms and territories, manual searches alone are rarely enough. Keltie combines AI-powered detection technology and scalable enforcement with the strategic oversight of experienced trade mark attorneys. We help clients identify potentially harmful activity, prioritise the issues that matter and take proportionate action to protect their brands. Technology provides the reach; our attorneys provide the judgement.
Your brand may be used across websites, marketplaces, social media, company names, domain names and official registers. Identifying potentially harmful activity early can give you more options to protect your intellectual property, customers and reputation.
A domain name that copies or closely resembles your brand can be used to divert customers, impersonate your business or support misleading online activity. Such domains may be registered long before they are actively used, making early detection an important part of an effective online brand protection strategy.
A newly registered company using a name identical or similar to your brand can create confusion, disrupt commercial activity or signal an intention to trade on your reputation. Registering a company name does not in itself give a right to use that name as a trade mark, but the registration may still need to be addressed.
The attorneys at Keltie join forces with Customs Authorities, Border Forces and Online Enforcement Agencies to tackle infringement and counterfeiting head-on. Counterfeit goods pose a significant threat to the reputation of brands and unsuspecting consumers through a wide range of sectors.
People who work in this area
Gemma delivers strategic and commercial IP advice to a large variety of organisations ranging from large multinationals and universities to SMEs and start-ups. Gemma has significant senior in-house experience which is invaluable to her IP consulting work in which she guides her clients through all practical, commercial and strategic IP matters.
Richard is a highly experienced patent attorney working across a range of high-tech fields, with particular interests in cryptography, telecommunications, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing – the more complex the technology, the better. His practice is split between large corporate clients and start-ups and scale-ups, and his primary motivation is to make sure that his clients obtain, maintain, and use their intellectual property in the way that makes the most commercial sense for them.
Sectors we work in
Materials science and the technologies involved in manufacturing processes underpin almost every element of technological development. The function, quality, longevity and financial value of products are all impacted by their material make up and the mechanisms involved in their production.
No matter what your product, aesthetics are invaluable. They are the first impression of a product: the contours, shapes, colours and textures that catch our eye as we see, use and interact with it. Not only does a distinct aesthetic have its own value, but it can enhance function, reinforce brand recognition and loyalty, and drive consumer choice.
Keltie's AI patent attorneys protect innovation across the full artificial intelligence stack, from machine learning architectures, training methods and foundation models to the AI-enabled products transforming every industry.
Branding has a key role to play in any industry. Brands are the flags that fly on behalf of a business or product. They are an identifier of origin that allows consumers to recognise where their products or services are coming from, so it is crucial that those brands resonate with consumers. They must also be kept free of problems that inhibit their ability to be the vehicle that drives a business.
Whether it is the development of novel materials and compounds, or the improvement of industrial processes to make them cleaner or more productive, chemical sciences underpin many of the aspects which are key to addressing the challenges of the 21st century. The diversity of innovation in chemistry is vast, with industry-leading companies combining resources and skills to create new products designed to solve problems and enhance our understanding.
Engineering inventions can be found in hugely complex products, or deceptively simple creations. They can encompass almost any field of technology, and often several fields at once.
More so than almost all other scientific fields, our knowledge, understanding and expertise in biology has increased at a phenomenal pace over the past few decades. Since the high throughput sequencing power used in the human genome project was unleashed at the beginning of the 21st century, multiple '-omics' disciplines now characterise a diverse field that offers such enormous potential for medicine, food production, wellbeing and human expression.
Modern technologies and advancements in product design and manufacturing contribute to our being able to lead a more sustainable and improved lifestyle. These in turn are increasing both the expectancy and quality of life we are able to enjoy as consumers by combatting health challenges and diseases, improving diagnostics and developing new therapies.
Keltie's pharmaceuticals and drug discovery team protects and defends the intellectual property behind innovative small molecule drugs, formulations and combination therapies, from early-stage pre-clinical leads to clinical candidates and through to marketed medicines and the lifecycle that follows.
Precision medicine, also referred to as personalised or stratified medicine, is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention in which medical decisions, treatments and products are tailored to a subgroup of patients by taking into account the individual characteristics of each patient.
There are few greater challenges than starting a company from scratch but the rewards for taking a great idea or innovation and turning it into a successful business are substantial. At their inception, new companies grow quickly, driven by the dedication of owners and their will to make them profitable, but usually with limited financial resources. In order to become established and find a strong position within the market, startups need to attract external investment.
Sustainability or Green Technology is a hugely prominent sector as public consciousness, awareness and engagement with the ‘green agenda’ grows. As consumers, our behaviour can have a significant environmental impact and has prompted substantial strategic and financial support from national governments and the UN as they look to industry to develop sustainable solutions, products and technologies.
The rise of the internet and modern telecommunications has been underpinned by our ability to program computers to carry out complex operations. Almost every aspect of our lives has been advanced by developments in technology and software, making previously slow or complicated processes easier, faster and in some cases, cheaper.
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