{"id":3526,"date":"2019-08-21T15:32:36","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T03:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jamesandwells.com\/ip-insurance-can-you-afford-to-be-without-it\/"},"modified":"2022-02-28T17:07:02","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T04:07:02","slug":"ip-insurance-can-you-afford-to-be-without-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jamesandwells.com\/au\/ip-insurance-can-you-afford-to-be-without-it\/","title":{"rendered":"IP insurance \u2013 can you afford to be without it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was first published in\u00a0Bay of Plenty Business News\/Waikato Business New<\/a>s<\/em>.<\/p>\n

House, car and contents. Health, life and income. Liability, assets and interruption. These are all types of personal and business insurance commonly available in New Zealand.<\/h6>\n

What is not commonly available in New Zealand is insurance cover for IP claims. More specifically, insurance cover for legal expenses incurred in enforcing or defending claims involving intellectual property rights. Perhaps insurers don\u2019t think businesses need it? If so, as an IP litigator I encourage them to think again.<\/p>\n

Like most litigation, IP litigation is not typically an event that businesses \u2013 especially SME\u2019s \u2013 plan or budget for in advance. If, then, a business unexpectedly becomes embroiled in litigation, as enforcer or defender, its involvement often comes at a significant human and financial cost.<\/p>\n

Looking at the financial cost, like most litigation IP litigation can be expensive, whether you\u2019re the enforcer or the defender. The toll on cashflow and bottom line can be heavy. This is partly because New Zealand is not currently set up with an economical and efficient tribunal or court-based process for resolving \u2018low-level\u2019 IP disputes (the exception being the .nz domain name dispute resolution system). For example, businesses can\u2019t take a simple trade mark or copyright dispute to an IP Disputes Tribunal because there isn\u2019t such a tribunal (not at the moment, anyway).<\/p>\n

In my experience, if a business hasn\u2019t budgeted for IP litigation then one of the following scenarios will likely occur: if enforcer, the business will take initial steps to enforce its rights but stop short of filing court proceedings, allowing innovation to give way to imitation; if defender, the business will, if it cannot rely on business liability insurance, borrow as much as possible to defend the claims or go into liquidation. Whether you\u2019re the enforcer or the defender, none of these are satisfactory outcomes.<\/p>\n

The simple solution is to take out intellectual property legal expenses insurance. In New Zealand, businesses can do so with Delta Insurance, and have been able to do so since September 2018. (For the record, I have no affiliation with Delta Insurance.) To the best of my knowledge, Delta is currently the only insurer in New Zealand offering IP legal expenses insurance.<\/p>\n

Under Delta\u2019s policy, kiwi businesses can claim up to $500,000 in legal expenses, although Delta will explore higher limits depending on the proposal. Further, although the policy only covers New Zealand-originating risks to start with, worldwide jurisdiction can be considered on request, meaning that exporters may be able to insure for overseas-originating risks, too. For further information, visit\u00a0Delta Insurance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Singapore, Antares Underwriting has recently announced a\u00a0similar policy<\/a>. The policy is supported by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore under the banner \u201cIP Insurance Initiative for Innovators\u201d. Clearly, then, the concept of IP legal expenses insurance has merit.<\/p>\n

For every business who values its IP assets, my recommendation is this: in the first instance, consult with an IP attorney about protecting your, and minimising your risk of infringing others\u2019, IP. Then, don\u2019t rely on a \u201cshe\u2019ll be right\u201d approach to IP litigation; consider taking out IP legal expenses insurance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was first published in\u00a0Bay of Plenty Business News\/Waikato Business News. House, car and contents. Health, life and income. Liability, assets and interruption. These are all types of personal and business insurance commonly available in New Zealand. What is not commonly available in New Zealand is insurance cover for IP claims. More specifically, insurance…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"class_list":["post-3526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation-au","insight-resource-articles-au"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIP insurance \u2013 can you afford to be without it? - James & Wells<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jamesandwells.com\/au\/ip-insurance-can-you-afford-to-be-without-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"IP insurance \u2013 can you afford to be without it? - James & Wells\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article was first published in\u00a0Bay of Plenty Business News\/Waikato Business News. 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