In many respects, intellectual property (IP) may be one of the most valuable investments a company can make, since no other areas of business can function without it. This article focuses on control system IP, suggesting that the situation today—with changing workforce demographics and a number of control systems reaching end-of-life phases—makes keeping tabs on IP issues may be more important than ever. The article covers human IP, machine IP, how to transfer IP during migrations or system upgrades, and the legal protections for IP. The author notes that control strategies can be patented if they bring a new form of innovation, and solicits the advice of Finnegan partner Darren Jiron on how companies wishing to work collaboratively should protect themselves and their IP: Jiron suggests, “When a producer develops a process and determines that it wants to join with another company to implement a control system for that process, the first step is for those companies to determine where that relationship is going and what they want to accomplish.” Jiron cautions, “If the agreement is somewhat vague as to who owns what IP, it could be problematic down the road.”
