airMont AS is a small Norwegian start-up that provides digital services directed to improving air quality. Dehns has worked with airMont since their inception, advising on matters relating to IP and innovation management.

airMont had been very busy brainstorming a large number of ideas for a potential product, and were aware that they were generating IP but needed help deciding what to do with the various ideas they had come up with. With a finite budget and limited timescales, it was important to them to have an IP Strategy in place to ensure resources were spent wisely.

Dehns was asked to provide a workshop to airMont to work through their various ideas in order to meet their commercial goals. After hearing more about airMont, their commercial goals, and their target markets, the team worked through each of airMont’s innovations in turn, and Sam helped to tease out the various underlying ideas into individual components and mapped these components to the commercial goals.

With an idea in mind of the major commercial milestones such as when airMont’s first product is due to launch, when further funding may be sought, and when R&D phases are planned for, Dehns plotted out an IP Roadmap that planned out when patent filings should be made and for which particular ideas. The IP Roadmap shows a timeline of when airMont have major decision points, both in terms of deadlines relating to the patent filings (such as decisions regarding international coverage) but also commercial milestones that may impact those decisions.

A core patent family has been filed directed to key aspects of a minimum viable product and that will also be used to cover potential future products, which will also benefit from further patent filings that are planned for the coming years. The IP Roadmap is designed to take commercial milestones into account, such that wherever possible, decisions relating to airMont’s IP portfolio are timed to occur after significant events that influence that decision.

Dehns has also advised airMont in relation to the acquisition of third party IP to help support their commercial objectives, which has expanded the portfolio to include some key related technologies, helping airMont to achieve their commercial goal of providing a range of digital services relating to air quality.

Due to the blend of IP and commercial expertise Dehns can provide, airMont are able to make sure that their IP budget is spent in an informed way, with each filing being carefully planned out such that ideas still being developed are kept confidential and ensuring that the business is in the best place commercially to make decisions in the future.