Exploitation of Intellectual Property Portfolio in the Software Service Industry

Subhadip Sarkar, Vice President ‒ Legal and Corporate Affairs, Cognizant Technology Solutions, India

Intellectual Property (IP) plays a crucial role in helping software service providers protect the technology assets, establish their brand, differentiate their products and services, and generate revenue from the assets. The development of solutions or services around these technology assets is of paramount interest to the software service providers. IP rights provide limited monopolistic right over their assets thus they provide a competitive edge over other companies. This paper proposes a framework for exploitation of these IP assets in the software services industries. The framework includes exploitation of IP from Research & Innovation, and software solutions provided to clients. The foundation of the framework is built on identification of potential IP and its ownership at the initial stage of the development to ensure that the business has rights to exploit the assets. The IP assets thus generated from the R&I project and solutions is combined into solutions accelerators for creating products, platforms and services, thus providing a mechanism for exploiting the IP assets.

Subhadip Sarkar works as a Vice President ‒ Legal and Corporate Affairs, in Cognizant Technology Solutions and has more than 2 decades of experience working in diverse industries with successful record of leadership accomplishment in both products and services industries in multiple technology and functional domains. Subhadip is part of the Legal and Corporate Affairs Group and Senior Leadership Team at Cognizant and works closely with the different members of the Executive Leadership and Board of Directors. Subhadip is a well renowned speaker internationally and is frequently invited to speak at several industry forums, national and international conferences. He has been credited with several research papers and articles/book chapters in national and international journals/conference / books, including a granted U.S. patent. He is an active player in the national committee of various Government and Private Bodies in India. Subhadip has also won several National and International accolades in areas of technology, IP management, Leadership Excellence, operations and strategy.

Cognizant technology solutions is one of the world’s leading professional services companies, transforming clients’ business, operating and technology models for the digital era. Cognizant’s unique industry-based, consultative approach helps clients envision, build and run more innovative and efficient businesses. Headquartered in the U.S., Cognizant, a member of the NASDAQ-100, is ranked 205 on the Fortune 500 and is consistently listed among the most admired companies in the world.