Poverty-Alleviating IP Solutions
The 6 Step Process
Light Years IP (LYIP) aims to alleviate poverty and create higher and more secure export income for developing countries by empowering small producers, traders, exporters, and their governments with tools to own and control non-physical values of their products. We use an export business strategy approach to IP for developing countries.
We assist producers, exporters, and governments in the developing world to analyze their export potential by identifying the intangible value in their products and using IP tools (i.e. patents, trademarks, brands, licenses) for more sustained export income that alleviates poverty for poor people. The ownership of IP is secured in market countries through the existing IP legal frameworks of the developed world.
Light Years IP offers a case specific strategy to uncover Poverty Alleviating IP Solutions (PAIPS) by analyzing intangible values that can be captured. Whether the product is physical or creative, and whether the end strategy involves legal tools such as trademarks or patents, marketing tools such as national branding, or business tools such as licenses or agreements, the process begins the same: with a set of fundamental business questions establishing whether and where intangible values exist, who controls them, and what IP strategies can be most effective in a each particular case. We believe any successful export-oriented venture has to begin with an analysis of intangible values. Such analysis will provide answers to questions crucial to sustained earnings from exports.
Each Poverty Alleviating IP Solution (PAIPS) shares the same process:
Step 1. Identify the intangible.
- What are the defining characteristics of the consumer and wholesale market for the export product?
- Why do consumers choose the product or a competitor?
Step 2. Analyze the market situation.
- What is the economic value of these intangible? Define the intangible value.
- Who currently controls and profits from these intangible values? What is their profit margin from the intangible?
Step 3. Evaluate the link to Poverty Alleviation.
- What would be the effect on export income if some part of the intangible value could be captured by the producer?
- How would the increased export income lead to poverty alleviation?
- How would the additional income improve the livelihoods of poor people? How would increased long-term security of income improve the future of poor communities?
Step 4. Analyze the business situation.
- What strategy is needed to capture a part of the intangible value?
- What are the distribution links to the export market?
- How would capturing this intangible value impact the retail market? Will this intangible add to the market value (and increase consumer price) of the product or shift a portion of the current value from wholesaler/retailer to producer?
Step 5. Identify the best IP strategy.
- What is the best IP strategy for capturing the intangibles?
Legal Tools: copyrights, patents, trade marks, trade dress, trade secrets
Business Tools: licenses, agreements, joint ventures
Marketing Tools: branding, promotion - Where can the IP strategy be implemented? An important characteristic shared by all of the following examples is the reliance on existing IP rights enforcement mechanisms in the developed world.
Step 6. Build capacity.
- What capacity needs to be built for implementing the strategy?
- How do producers, exporters, and governments need to be involved and communicate?
- What new market links are needed to implement the strategies?
