Intellectual Property Escrow Services

How to Protect Your IP Collateral and Investment

Are you planning to invest in or loan money to a company? You first must ensure the company owns the intellectual property they claim to possess. Conversely, you may want to know that founders and employees will create any relevant IP with your funds.

The value of your investment or the security of your loan may depend on this intellectual property.

Attorneys can prepare contracts that assign ownership of this intellectual property from the founders and employees to the company. Such contracts grant security interests in the intellectual property, but these contracts are only half of what you need.

Intellectual Property Escrow Is the Solution

EscrowTech’s IP (Intellectual Property) Collateral and Investment Protection services provide documentation and secure storage of IP embodiments. You’ll have dated, independent corroboration of what the company owns.

Plus, IP escrow allows for access to and retrieval of this intellectual property if and when you need it.

Our IP Protection Chart explains how it works:

Graphic illustrating the "IP Audit Trail" and how it works. | EscrowTech

You Might Need an Intellectual Property Escrow Agreement If:

  • The company’s founders and employees leave the company and take:
    • Source code
    • Confidential documents
    • Trade secrets
    • Inventions
    • Data
    • Encryption keys
    • Other proprietary materials
  • The company’s founders and employees leave and leave outdated materials (or nothing) behind.
  • Founders or employees claim they developed, created, or invented your IP after leaving. They insist the contracts they signed don’t apply to the “new” intellectual property.

IP escrow helps you establish what the company owns and what the security interests apply to. It exists to protect your investment or loan.

What You Can Protect with Intellectual Property Escrow Services

The following materials can be deposited with EscrowTech:

  • Computer programs (including source code and development environments)
  • Confidential documents
  • Invention disclosures
  • Drawings
  • Prototypes
  • Samples
  • Formulas
  • Data
  • Encryption keys
  • Other embodiments of intellectual property

Materials will be held in a depository dedicated to protecting you, the investor, or the lender. Periodic deposits of these materials create an independently corroborated audit trail of the intellectual property.

IP COLLATERAL AND INVESTMENT PROTECTION FEES