Adding business value: a strategy for identifying and patenting environment‐related inventions and avoiding patent infringement

For many environmental companies, reaching financial goals is a function of identifying and protecting intellectual property assets, keeping those assets from falling into the hands of competitors and avoiding litigation disputes over the use of those assets. Recognizing that intellectual assets are valuable tangible and intangible assets of a company is the first step in maximizing the value of those assets. However, many environmental companies are not aware that some of their technologies, ideas, concepts and know‐how are potentially patentable and, therefore, fail to maximize the value of those assets by taking advantage of the limited monopolies that patent systems provide to the owners of patents. In the ever‐increasing competitive global market, companies should evaluate their intellectual assets to ensure they are adequately protecting those assets by obtaining patents for ideas that are patentable. As more patents for environmental technologies issue from patent offices around the world, however, the likelihood of infringing one of those patents can increase. Therefore, avoiding infringing others' patents while at the same time identifying and patenting the company's own technologies should be a key business strategy regardless of the size of the environmental company. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment