Per Wendin is Subject Matter Expert for Operational IP Management
In today’s economy, intellectual property👉 Creations of the mind protected by legal rights. is more than a legal necessity — it is a governance mechanism that shapes competition👉 Rivalry between entities striving for a shared goal or limited resource., collaboration, and innovation👉 Practical application of new ideas to create value. across industries. Yet managing IP effectively remains one of the most complex challenges companies face. At the Nordic IP Day, the discussions around intangibles, innovation, and IP governance👉 Aligns IP assets and decisions with corporate strategy and IP risk. highlighted both the opportunities and the risks within the IP system. These themes resonate deeply with the work of Per Wendin, whose expertise in operational IP Management👉 Strategic and operative handling of IP to maximize value. demonstrates how structured approaches can transform IP from a cost center into a value driver. This article is a summary of the discussion at the Nordic IP Day on operational IP Management. An overview of the event is available here:
The Challenges of Operational IP Management in Industry
The rise of intangibles has fundamentally altered the competitive landscape. Intellectual property is no longer a secondary matter but often the most valuable asset a company owns. Yet despite its central role, operationalizing IP management continues to be plagued by systemic challenges.
One challenge is the persistent ambivalence of IP itself. As the Nordic IP Day presentation showed, IP simultaneously drives innovation and erects barriers. It secures R&D investments and enables knowledge transfer, but also raises costs and reinforces market inequalities. Large corporations with established legal departments can leverage IP as a strategic weapon, while many SMEs and startups struggle to afford the skills and expertise required. This imbalance often determines whether an innovative company can grow sustainably or faces prohibitive risks.
Another difficulty lies in the international dimension. While IP systems foster global trade through common standards, they are unevenly developed worldwide. This asymmetry creates uncertainty for businesses attempting to scale internationally. Companies face disparate legal frameworks, complex enforcement regimes, and varying levels of protection — all of which increase the operational burden of managing IP across borders.
Beyond legal frameworks, the shift to a knowledge economy brings new forms of complexity. Then, in the mid-20th century, the dominant industries of chemistry, electronics, and pharmaceuticals shaped the patent👉 A legal right granting exclusive control over an invention for a limited time. debate. Now, AI, platforms, algorithms, and data are at the center. This transition forces companies to rethink their operational practices. Traditional IP portfolio-building approaches are no longer sufficient. Companies must design IP practices that not only protect exclusivity but also enable collaboration and ecosystem growth. Collaborative IP management, as highlighted at Nordic IP Day, exemplifies this shift: orchestrating relationships rather than only securing IP portfolios becomes crucial.
Finally, many firms lack the internal governance to integrate IP considerations with business goals. Operational IP Management requires cross-functional collaboration between R&D, IP, and business development teams. Yet in practice, silos persist, with IP strategies often disconnected from product development or market entry strategies. This disconnection leads to missed opportunities, unnecessary risks, and IP portfolios that are expensive to maintain but fail to deliver strategic value.
Specific Challenges in Managing IP Strategically and Operationally
If the industry-wide picture highlights structural ambivalence, the operational level reveals the concrete challenges companies encounter in practice. Four domains illustrate where firms often struggle: IP strategy👉 Approach to manage, protect, and leverage IP assets., IP processes, IP portfolio management👉 Strategic management of diverse assets to optimize returns and balance risk., and IP protection of products.
A central difficulty lies in aligning operational IP strategy with corporate objectives. Many firms define IP goals in abstract legal terms — patent counts, trademark👉 A distinctive sign identifying goods or services from a specific source. registrations, or design filings — without tying them to business strategy. This disconnect reduces IP to a cost factor rather than a value generator. Companies need to integrate IP objectives directly with innovation pipelines, market positioning, and competitive differentiation. But doing so requires both leadership commitment and an operational framework that bridges legal and commercial priorities.
Processes represent another area of weakness. Effective IP management demands standardized processes for invention harvesting, IP valuation, patent filing, and IP maintenance. Yet in many organizations, processes are fragmented and dependent on individual expertise. Without clear governance, the risk👉 The probability of adverse outcomes due to uncertainty in future events. of losing valuable inventions👉 A novel method, process or product that is original and useful. or overlooking freedom-to-operate analyses increases significantly. The lack of robust processes also creates bottlenecks when companies attempt to scale their operations or expand into new markets.
IP portfolio management presents its own set of challenges. Companies often accumulate large numbers of patents and trademarks without sufficient evaluation of their relevance, quality, or commercial use. This leads to portfolios that are costly to maintain but misaligned with current business models. Systematic portfolio reviews, including pruning and licensing👉 Permission to use a right or asset granted by its owner. decisions, are often neglected, leaving hidden value untapped and non-core assets underutilized.
The targeted protection of products is a further operational challenge. In fast-moving markets, ensuring that product features are legally protected is not straightforward. Design choices, technical functionalities, or brand👉 A distinctive identity that differentiates a product, service, or entity. elements may not meet the requirements for protection, or protection may be too narrow to provide meaningful competitive advantage. Companies need mechanisms to assess the protectability of products early in the innovation cycle. Failing to do so results in wasted investment in features that competitors can easily copy or design around, eroding margins and undermining market positions.
Taken together, these challenges highlight the complexity of operational IP Management. Without solid IP strategies, efficient processes, disciplined IP portfolio oversight, and careful evaluation of protectability, companies face high costs and limited returns on their IP investments.
Per Wendin’s Approach to Operational IP Management
Against this backdrop, the expertise of Per Wendin offers a model for best practice in operational IP Management. His work emphasizes the integration of IP strategy, IP processes, IP portfolio management, and targeted product feature protection into a coherent framework — ensuring that IP contributes directly to business outcomes rather than functioning in isolation.
At the strategic level, Wendin advocates embedding IP into corporate road mapping. Rather than treating patents, trademarks, and designs as end points, he positions them as enablers of competitive advantage. This means aligning IP with long-term business goals, business models, product roadmaps, and market expansion plans. By establishing clear connections between IP activities and strategic objectives, he helps organizations shift from reactive to proactive management.
In terms of IP processes, Wendin demonstrates the importance of process standardization and IP governance. His approach structures the process from invention disclosure to filing decisions, ensuring that all relevant stakeholders — engineers, business managers, and IP/legal counsel — contribute to the evaluation. This reduces risks of overlooking valuable inventions, improves the quality of filings, and creates transparency in decision-making. Standardized processes also support scalability, enabling organizations to manage growing volumes of IP efficiently.
IP portfolio management, in Wendin’s framework, becomes an active discipline rather than a passive administration. He emphasizes regular reviews that assess both the legal strength and the business relevance of IP assets. Non-core patents may be licensed to generate revenue, while underperforming assets can be pruned to free resources. By focusing on quality and strategic alignment, Wendin ensures that IP portfolios serve the company’s strategic direction rather than drain its resources.
When it comes to the IP protection of products, Wendin stresses early evaluation. His methodology incorporates legal assessments into the product design and development stages, allowing companies to prioritize features that can be effectively protected. This reduces the risk of investing in unprotectable innovations and strengthens the link between R&D and market differentiation. By making IP protectability part of product development, companies gain confidence that their investments will translate into defensible competitive positions.
What sets Wendin’s approach apart is the holistic perspective. He does not view IP as a legal silo but as an operational management system embedded within corporate governance. This resonates with the Nordic IP Day’s call to see IP not just as an exclusivity generator but as a governance mechanism for business ecosystems. By structuring relationships and sharing value, Wendin’s operational framework equips companies to navigate today’s knowledge economy with agility and confidence.
In a world where intangibles define competitive advantage, Wendin’s operational IP Management approach shows how companies can turn complexity into clarity, risks into opportunities, and costs into strategic assets.
