IP Diligence Readiness

Pass the Audit, Win the Narrative  

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Companies that stumble in IP diligence usually do not have a weak portfolio. They have a disorganized one. A missing assignment, an undisclosed license, a prosecution history that lives only in outside counsel's portal: all of it is fixable, but only if you find it before the investor or acquirer does. This guide reframes readiness around the two things a process evaluates. Hygiene (chain of title, prosecution, encumbrances, disputes) is pass/fail and can only hurt you; it determines whether the deal happens at all. Your narrative (what the portfolio protects and what it lets you exclude competitors from) determines what the deal is worth. Neither can be built under deadline. Most companies get only about a quarter's notice, so by the time the term sheet arrives, the work that matters most is already done.

Inside the guide you'll learn:



  • Customer-Centric IP Starts With People

    Why diligence rewards two different kinds of work, and why hygiene deserves a brisk pass while the narrative deserves most of your preparation time

  • Rethink Processes with Stakeholders in Mind

    What a realistic readiness timeline looks like when you only get a quarter's warning, and which problems are fixable in three months versus the ones that had to be solved all along

  • Tech Should Serve Everyone, Not Just Legal

    How the bar moves with stage, why hygiene scrutiny deepens from Series A to M&A, and why the moat story gets tested in every partner meeting long before anyone pulls your assignment records

  • Mission

    How to tell whether the context behind your portfolio survived the people and law firms who created it, with a 48-hour drill that surfaces the gaps before the other side does

  • Mission

    A stage-tagged checklist for every section, scored by severity, so you know which gaps can end a deal, which slow it down, and which are rehearsal-level polish

Read the guide to understand how to pass the audit and own the narrative, so the story told in the room is yours, and the only thing left to do under deadline is answer quickly.