--- name: intellectual_property_management description: "Run intellectual property management for a business: build one IP register covering trademarks, copyright work, patents, trade secrets, and licences in and out, run clearance checks before use, lock down work-for-hire and contractor assignment terms, track renewals and watch dates, and audit ownership. Triggers when someone asks to track IP, audit what a business owns, clear a name or logo, check who owns contractor work, manage licences, or catch a trademark or patent renewal." --- # Intellectual Property Management ## Purpose Most businesses cannot answer three simple questions on demand: what do we own, what do we only have a licence to use, and what date will cost us a right if we miss it. The answers sit in inboxes, filing cabinets, and the memory of whoever hired the designer three years ago. This skill replaces that scatter with one system. One register holds every asset and every licence, with an owner and a next action date for each line. Clearance happens before a name, image, or piece of code ships, not after a complaint arrives. Contractor work gets signed assignment terms before the work starts, because payment alone does not transfer ownership. Renewals and watch dates are computed from the register, so a deadline is a calendar fact, not a surprise. This is an operating system for IP, not legal advice. It flags the points where a lawyer is needed and keeps the paperwork in order so that conversation is short and cheap. ## Workflow 1. Build the register. Create one register from `references/register-template.csv`. One row per asset or licence, with these fields: asset_id, name, type, basis, owner_or_licensor, creator, registration_no, territory, key_date, next_action, next_action_date, status, proof_location, notes. Use type values trademark, copyright, patent, trade_secret, domain, licence_in, licence_out, or other. Use basis values owned, licensed_in, licensed_out, or public_domain_check. Every row needs a named internal owner. A row with no owner, no proof location, or no next action date is incomplete, and the audit tool in step 6 flags it. Record proof where it actually lives: registration certificate, signed assignment, licence agreement, source file location. The register points to proof, it does not store the proof itself and it never stores secrets, passwords, or the content of a trade secret. 2. Separate owned from borrowed. Walk the business surface by surface and fill the register: brand names, logos, taglines, product names, website copy, photos, video, music, fonts, software and code, inventions, packaging, customer lists and internal processes that are kept secret, and every third party asset in use under licence. For each line, answer the ownership question with evidence, not assumption. Who created it, under what contract, and was there a signed assignment. If a trademark sits in a founder name, a domain sits in a former employee account, or code was built by a contractor with no assignment, log it as a gap with a fix action and a date. That gap list is the most valuable output of the first pass. 3. Run clearance before use. Before any new name, logo, tagline, product, campaign, or content release, run the checklist in `references/clearance-checklist.md`. For a trademark, that means searching the USPTO Trademark Search system at tmsearch.uspto.gov (the old TESS system was retired on November 30, 2023), plus state registries and common law sources such as web, marketplace, domain, and social use. Judge hits on likelihood of confusion: similarity in sight, sound, and meaning, plus how closely the goods or services relate. Likelihood of confusion is the most common ground for a USPTO refusal, and a federal only search misses common law rights that still block use in their area. For copyright material, clearance means confirming you own it, licensed it for this exact use, territory, and term, or have a documented basis to use it. Stock, fonts, music, and open source code each carry licence terms that limit use. Log every clearance search in the register notes with the date, the sources searched, and the result, even when the result is clear. A clearance with no record looks, later, like no clearance at all. Stop rule: an exact or near match on a live mark for related goods, a licence that does not cover the planned use, or a creator with no assignment means do not ship until the issue is resolved or a lawyer clears it in writing. 4. Lock down creation terms before work starts. For employees, copyright in work prepared within the scope of employment is a work made for hire under 17 USC 101, and the employer is the author. For contractors, that shortcut mostly fails. A commissioned work counts as work made for hire only if it falls in one of nine statutory categories and both parties sign a written agreement saying so. The nine categories are: a contribution to a collective work, part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, a translation, a supplementary work, a compilation, an instructional text, a test, answer material for a test, or an atlas. General software, a standalone logo, and most marketing copy fall outside that list. So every contractor, freelancer, and agency agreement uses the belt and braces terms in `references/contractor-assignment-terms.md`: a work made for hire clause where the law allows it, plus a present assignment of all rights if it does not, plus a promise to sign further papers, plus clauses covering pre-existing material the contractor brings, moral rights where they apply, and delivery of source files. A copyright transfer needs a signed writing under 17 USC 204. A paid invoice is not that writing. Apply the same check backwards once: list everyone who created material the business relies on in the last few years, confirm a signed agreement exists for each, and chase a confirmatory assignment for any gap before it becomes a sale, funding, or dispute problem. 5. Protect trade secrets with measures you can prove. Under the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, protection depends on two things: the information gets independent economic value from not being known, and the owner took reasonable measures to keep it secret. Courts and the statute look for concrete steps, not intentions. For each trade secret row, record the measures in place, chosen from: need to know access limits, password and access controls, documents marked confidential, NDAs with staff, contractors, and partners who see it, staff training, and exit interviews that remind leavers of their obligations and recover company material. If a secret has no measures recorded, it is not being protected in a way a court can see. List the secret by name and location only. Never write the secret itself into the register. 6. Track licences in both directions. For licence_in rows, record licensor, scope, territory, exclusivity, term, expiry or renewal date, fee or royalty trigger, and any use limits such as seats, impressions, product categories, or sublicensing bans. Set next_action_date to 90 days before expiry for anything the business still depends on, so replacement or renegotiation happens while there is still time. For licence_out rows, record licensee, scope, territory, term, payment terms, quality control duties for trademark licences, and the date the next royalty report or payment check is due. A trademark licence with no quality control at all is a known risk to the mark, flag it for legal review rather than fixing the wording yourself. Run the licence expiry view monthly. An expired font, image, music, or software licence in a live product is an infringement risk with a paper trail. 7. Compute renewal and watch dates, then calendar them. Run the deadline tool: `python3 scripts/ip_deadlines.py references/register-template.csv --as-of 2026-10-24` Point it at your live register file instead of the template. It validates the register, lists every next action sorted by date, flags overdue and due within 90 days, and computes the standard United States dates below from a registration or grant date when you pass them with the helper flags shown in the script help. Trademark, United States federal registration: file a Section 8 Declaration of Use between the 5th and 6th year after registration, then a combined Section 8 and Section 9 renewal between the 9th and 10th year and every 10 years after that. Each window has a six month grace period with a surcharge. Miss the grace period and the registration is cancelled. Keep using the mark as registered, because rights rest on use. Patent, United States utility patent: pay maintenance fees at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after grant. There is a payment window before each date and a six month grace period after it with a surcharge, then the patent expires. Design and plant patents have no maintenance fees. Check current amounts in the USPTO fee schedule at filing time, do not rely on amounts quoted in old articles or in this skill. Copyright: no renewal filing for works created on or after January 1, 1978. As a general rule protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. For anonymous, pseudonymous, and work made for hire works, the term is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first. Registration is still worth recording in the register because it affects enforcement options. Domains and licences: renew before expiry, with next_action_date set well ahead of the registrar or licensor deadline, and auto-renew checked as a separate field in notes. Watch duty: the USPTO does not police a mark for its owner. Set a recurring watch, monthly for core marks, covering new USPTO filings and Official Gazette publications, plus marketplace, domain, and social use. Log each watch run and each hit assessment in the register notes. A hit is a prompt to assess similarity and relatedness, not an automatic accusation. 8. Audit on a cadence. Quarterly, run the tool in audit mode and work the output in this order: overdue actions, incomplete rows, ownership gaps, licences expiring within 90 days, trade secrets with no recorded measures. Annually, do a full WIPO style audit pass: identify existing and potential IP assets, check coverage and gaps, confirm the business actually owns the assets it treats as strategic, surface unused assets that cost money to maintain, and list third party assets in use that create risk. Before a sale, funding round, or major partnership, run the full audit unprompted and hand over the gap list early. Due diligence asks who owns the key assets, whether registrations are valid and fees paid, whether licences or encumbrances exist, and whether employee and contractor creations were properly assigned. A clean register answers most of that in one file. ## Output Contract A management run produces: - The register as a CSV with one row per asset or licence, every row carrying an internal owner, a basis, a proof location, and a next action with a date, or an explicit flag that the field is missing. - A deadline list sorted by date, with overdue items first, then items due within 30 and 90 days, each with the action, the asset, and the owner. - A gap list covering ownership gaps, missing proof, missing assignments, and trade secrets with no recorded protective measures, each with a fix action and a target date. - For any clearance request, a clearance record stating what was checked, which sources were searched and when, what was found, and the decision: clear, clear with limits, or do not use, with the limits written out. - For any contractor engagement, the signed agreement status: which terms from the reference file were used, when it was signed, and where the signed copy lives. ## Operating Rules - This skill is process support, not legal advice. Route registration filings, oppositions, infringement claims, licence drafting for high value deals, and any disputed ownership question to a qualified IP lawyer in the relevant territory, and say plainly when a question needs one. - Never invent registration numbers, dates, licence terms, fee amounts, or ownership facts. If a fact is not in a document you have seen, mark the register field unverified and name what would verify it. - Payment does not equal ownership. Treat any creator work with no signed assignment as not owned until a signed document proves otherwise, however long the business has used it. - Never record the content of a trade secret, a password, or a private key in the register, a clearance note, or any file this skill produces. Record location, owner, and protective measures only. - Do not file, renew, oppose, or send any notice to a third party as part of this skill without the business owner approving the exact filing or letter. Preparing the packet and computing the date is the job here, the external act is a separate approval. - Keep territory explicit. Rights are territorial. A United States registration, licence, or clearance says nothing by itself about rights in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or any other market. Add a row or a territory note for each market that matters. - When a right is intentionally let go, record the decision, who made it, and the date in the register and set status to lapsed_by_choice or abandoned. A deliberate lapse is a portfolio decision. A silent lapse is a failure.