Assignment
Intellectual Property Audit
Refer to the questions below. You will find an exhibit showing a questionnaire for an intellectual property audit. Review the questionnaire carefully. As a business owner, what steps would you take to prepare for this audit?
General:
• Has the Company ever acquired another entity or business?
• Has the business ever Sold any asses or business to another entity
• Is the Company engage in development or design of new products
• Has the company ever changed their name
• Trademark and Service mark:
• Does the company use trademark, service mark, logo's or slogans
• Has company ever applied for registration of a Mark with USPTO or other agency
• Has the company ever let other parties i.e. employees, clients, vendor to use Company trademark.
• Copyright:
• What written material does the Company use to advertise service?
• What written material does the Company use internally, such as employee hand book, training materials?
• Does the Company employees prepare written material?
• Patents:
• Has Company or its employees ever invented any useful article, product, method, process, or Software
• Has the Company ever made any improvement to another party's useful article, product or invention
• Has the Company ever engaged in the reverse engineering or decompilation of another company's product or Software
• Trademark Secrets:
• What information does the Company possess that would be harmful if the competitor finds out. (consider proprietary, development, financial data)
• Do employment, confidentiality, non-disclosures or other agreements exits?
• Does the Company conduct employee orientations employees and exit interviews to ensure employees understand confidentiality
• What measures are taken to protect confidentiality i.e., documents, access to keys, cameras
• Software:
• Has company designed, developed or modified any Software
• Does Company have rights to any Software
• Does Company allow employees to download Software or use Software at their home
• Claims
• Are there presently any pending claims related to any of the Company's intellectual properties/
• What clams have been made with in the last five years?
• Have all claims been resolved, if not what is the status.
• Has the Company made any claims?
General Documents
Assemble all applications and registration, and all license, royalties and security agreementsAssemble agreements entered into with employeesAssemble agreements with other Company's Write between 500- 750 words (approximately 2 - 3 pages) using Microsoft Word in APA style, see example below.
Use font size 12 and 1" margins.
Include cover page and reference page.
At least 80% of your paper must be original content/writing.
No more than 20% of your content/information may come from references.
Use at least three references from outside the course material, one reference must be from EBSCOhost. Text book, lectures, and other materials in the course may be used, but are not counted toward the three reference requirement.
Cite all reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) in the paper and list on a reference page in APA style.
References must come from sources such as, scholarly journals found in EBSCOhost, CNN, online newspapers such as, The Wall Street Journal, government websites, etc. Sources such as, Wikis, Yahoo Answers, eHow, blogs, etc. are not acceptable for academic writing.