Intellectual Property protection enables startups to preserve and exercise unique and differentiated product or service offerings in the competitive marketplace. One of the key success factors for a startup is to keep up with innovative offerings backed by carefully crafted Intellectual property rights such as Patents. It is observed that there is a positive correlation between companies’ ownership of IP, economic performance, and sustainability in marketplace. Startups or SMEs with registered IP are more likely to receive funding for product commercialization. Average funding amount for startups in digital technologies with patents is found to be almost 2.5 times the average funding amount of startups without patents.

This paper presents an analysis of startups in the digital technology domain from the perspective of  “IP & SMEs: Taking your ideas to market”.