joint venture marketing
Necessity is the mother of invention. However, invention can be just good business too, especially when two great entrepreneurial minds come together to form a joint venture and develop an innovative new product. If your JV is in business with something new, innovative, and that excites consumers, make sure you make the most of it.
Joint Venture and Innovation: A Perfect Match
A JV joins the minds and resources of two individual businesses or business owners and creates a third business with a new product. Many times, a JV team will discover that their initial enthusiasm for the venture has created something even bigger than their imaginations first suspected. When that happens, and innovation and creativity reign, a truly remarkable thing can happen in the intellectual property world.
Let’s say you are an expert software programmer and an enterprising individual approaches you to form a joint venture using your programming skills and his database designing expertise. The original idea was to develop a database system that would make invoicing, billing, and purchase easier and cross-referenced for coding and authorization for distribution businesses. The final product was such a success that it has found useful application in almost any business that does shipping of manufactured items.
How to Protect Your Innovation
What you and your JV partner created was highly valuable intellectual property. Your patent for the software and licensing potential can shoot your joint venture equity through the roof. If you are working with a JV partner and have developed intellectual property, here are some things you should do to protect it.
- Patents – New inventions, such as the software program, should be patented for your protection. With a sole patent on the product, you can license it for sale or for others to manufacture and sell. Residual income can amount to millions of dollars with the right patent and licensing strategy.
- Trademarks – A trademark can be a highly valuable identification. A product or even your JV business name can be trademarked if it becomes highly reputable and recognizable. A word, phrase, logo, or a combination of these can become a trademark.
- Copyright – A copyright is any creative artistic or literary endeavor that has manifested into a concrete, tangible item. Books, articles, paintings, graphic designs, sculptures, music compositions – all these can be copyrighted and licensed to others for publication, performance, or display. If you and your JV partner create copyrighted material, be sure to carefully manage the licensing and use of these items to increase the maximum profit.
Intellectual property is sometimes overlooked. Take time to make an inventory of the intellectual property developed by you and your joint venture partner. The inventory may surprise you. It is also recommended to hire an attorney who specializes in intellectual property to help not only protect these assets, but to help license them to the maximum benefit of your JV business.
christian fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A joint venture marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.
To discover more joint venture marketing Strategies join his free joint venture marketing Wealth Report.