Intellectual Property Audit Breakdown An intellectual property audit breaks down into nine areas that the intellectual property attorney should examine: patents, contracts with independent contractors, employment contracts, trademarks, licenses, trade secrets, copyrights including organization handbooks, training, and inventions. Each area has its own requirements that must be monitored through an audit.The attorney should first notify everyone who may be involved that the audit is about to take place. She then interviews the technical, legal, managerial, and human resources people to collect information on “…licenses, research and development reports, employee and contractor confidentiality and assignment agreements, and employee invention disclosure statements.” Based on the information thus obtained, she then documents the status of the organization’s intellectual property.Inventions Inventions are the first step in the development of potentially very valuable intellectual property. The attorney performing the audit should determine whether the organization is even aware of all the inventive activity carried out within its walls. Does the organization “harvest” its inventions (i.e., require disclosure of inventions and review disclosed inventions for patentability)? Is there an inventor incentive program in place? Does the organization monitor its employees’ inventive activity in other ways, such as having the in-house counsel “manage by meandering,” that is,…