If you look at the books of large companies these days you will see that their intellectual property (IP) adds a enormous amount of money to the balance sheet. In fact most companies fixed assets are microscopic in comparison to the brand and IP value. This tells us something very interesting - yes - how much more would your business be worth if you invested more in intellectual property recognition and registration?

When a company strategically identifies, maintains and secures its IP rights then this can obviously have a major impact on the business in terms of its overall operation, including its ability to appeal to investors, enter into particular business partnership, and ultimately increase its value when it comes to sale or company merger.

Large businesses who have mega-brands like McDonalds and Coca Cola are often quoted when it comes to their brand value as out-valuing their fixed assets hundreds of times, yet it is easy to forget how these companies also became so big.

We live in an information world now. Information companies like Google can be valued at a few billion dollars a few years after creation only because information is now so valuable. Information is a tradable asset only when it is protected by intellectual property laws and other laws. Every company, big or small should consider IP seriously. It is one of the best investments literally you can make with a company if the IP value is capitalized within the business and added to the balance sheet.

It is highly recommended for businesses of all sizes to be aware of intellectual property issues and create particular schemes that will proactively ensure that their IP will at all times be properly legally protected.

Here are a few areas to help you start concentrating on by first identifying the areas that you are creating intellectual property in:

1. Trademarks - these protect parts of your general brand such as slogans, pictures, names.

2. Copyrights - these cover the trade protection of expressive items such as documents, books, images, videos, audios etc.

3. Trade secrets - these protect proprietary information, internal know-how, systems and processes that are deemed to give you a business competitive edge

4. Patents and industrial designs which protect specific types of ideas and inventions and processes

Considering the above items the first step that you need to do is identifying existing intellectual property within your company. You may be amazed by how much you may have. Once all sources of a company's IP have been identified, processes should be put in place that enable the company to easily keep track of all existing intellectual property and all new intellectual property . Then someone needs to be given the responsibility to manage the IP.

Once the key intellectual property (IP) has been identified then the next step is to look at what should be registered to protect it legally. This is where a great patent lawyer comes in to play. Good intellectual property attorneys don't come cheap but seeing the value that is created then it pays off to invest for all your major intellectual property (IP).