3. Identify the IP rights from which its innovations and intangible assets are likely to benefit

Intangible assets play a predominant role in corporate assets. Even if they have little or no innovation, companies possess intangible assets of various kinds – trademarks and distinctive signs, designs and models, website architecture and content, information systems, data files, studies, methods... – which may or may not give rise to intellectual property rights.

Similarly, research and development projects, whether carried out within a company or as part of a partnership, generally produce a wide variety of results, including patentable inventions, unpatentable innovations, patentable but secret manufacturing processes, experimental or test data, new designs and forms, computer developments, software works...

What's more, the same innovation can sometimes be the subject of several intellectual property rights. For example, software is...