An Indian automobile company is interested in joint venture arrangement with a foreign company. It has, however, little knowledge about Due-diligence of intellectual property rights in a corporate transaction. Advise the

The strength of a company's intellectual property portfolio often drives the value of corporate transactions. Regardless of whether you are the target company or the buyer in a business transaction involving Intellectual Property, the due diligence process should be designed to reveal the value of the intangible assets-patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets. IP due diligence should ideally be conducted at the onset of negotiations. this not only allows a more reasoned value of the IP to be determined, but also enables proactive corrective action if any legal concerns are identified that may affect the value of the IP. Due diligence typically begins with a fact-based investigation to answer two questions. What are the products or services involved with this transaction? Does the existing IP cover those products or services? To answer the initial questions, the various products or services must be inventoried and the IP must be carefully reviewed to determine whether it includes those assets. by keeping the investigation focused on the relationship between the products of interest and the relevant IP, the investigation should remain on a path that parallels the goals and objectives of the transaction. After documenting the IP, the investigation turns to focus on one or a combination of the following legal analyses: Freedom-to-operate consideration Scope-of-protection, validity and enforceability concerns Ownership issues