Diligence rarely asks whether your IP is impressive; it asks whether it is owned, unencumbered and defensible. The killer findings are mundane: the logo a freelancer still owns, the brand registered by a founder personally, the open-source licence nobody read.
The one-page answers investors want
- Schedule of registrations/applications, all in the company's name.
- Assignment agreements: founders, employees, contractors — signed, written, complete.
- Third-party IP register: licences for everything you use, open-source compliance.
- Disputes and deadlines: anything pending, anything about to lapse.
Every item is fixable — cheaply now, expensively at term-sheet stage. That is precisely what an IP position audit prepares.