On 12 April 2021 we hosted our first CrowdTuesday on the topic of Intellectual Property. Intellectual property is one of the most important and valuable assets for the innovative companies around the world. Despite its significance for the future value and growth of the innovative ventures, the founders often neglect proper IP arrangements, be it a registration of particular IP rights or contractual arrangements protecting the IP assets when involving employees or other external parties.

Crowdfunding campaign adds another complexity into this equation, as making your product or service very public without thinking of IP can have some adverse impact on the IP rights. The real problem is lack of awareness and subsequently lack of finances to allocate for building a proper IP strategy or at least a basic strategy for initial IP protection.

With the help of experts and our co-organizers from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), as well as crowdfunding platform representatives, we addressed both issues. First, we raised awareness about the importance of IP in the context of crowdfunding campaign, then offered a first-hand account from the platform/company perspective and, lastly, we presented opportunities to significantly decrease IP exploration costs through new EUIPO SME Fund grants.

Panellists:

• Sebastien Hanck – EUIPO
• Coro Gutierrez – EUIPO
• Coenraad de Vries – Oneplanetcrowd & StartGreen Capital
• Ivona Skultetyova – EUROCROWD (moderator)