IP Innovators: Closing the Gap: Emily Teesdale on IP Strategy, Collaboration, and the Fractional Model

Most companies entering a joint development agreement are focused on making the project work. What they are less focused on—and what can create serious problems years down the line—is what happens to the confidential information shared during that project once it ends. That’s one of the central arguments Emily Teesdale, founder of Pivot IP, makes in a recent episode of IP Innovators.

Teesdale is a UK Chartered and European Patent Attorney with over 20 years of experience, including senior in-house IP roles at Airbus and GKN Aerospace. In the episode, she walks through the IP strategy gaps she most commonly encounters when working with engineering companies, and the risks that fall between the functions of outside patent counsel and internal business strategy.

The Gap Between Prosecution and Strategy

Teesdale’s starting point is a distinction that shapes everything else in the conversation: the difference between obtaining patent rights and building a strategy around them.

“What I’m not trying to do is to replace the company’s existing patent attorneys helping them out with their inventions and drafting and prosecuting those patent applications, ” she explained. “What I bring is something quite different to that. That’s the strategy side.”

For smaller engineering companies in particular, this strategic layer is frequently missing. Outside counsel handles prosecution. Legal handles contracts. But the role that connects IP to long-term business objectives—asking where the company wants to be in five or ten years and whether the IP position supports that—often has no clear owner.

The Confidential Information Problem

When two companies collaborate, they share information. But Teesdale’s point is that the information shared during a collaboration doesn’t disappear when the project ends—it remains in the receiving company’s systems, and the obligations that came with it remain in force.

To illustrate the risk, she describes a hypothetical: a company developing a new component teams up with a supplier who specializes in a particular metallic alloy manufacturing process. Over the course of the collaboration, the development company’s engineers gain meaningful insight into how that alloy is produced. The collaboration ends. The product moves forward. But that manufacturing knowledge is still sitting in the development company’s systems.

“It’s very important to make sure that you’re not just having it sit there and being used as if it’s your company information,” Teesdale said. “You’ve received that confidential information under some contract, and [you have to make] sure that you effectively toe the line in terms of what that contract allows you to do with that information.”

The challenge, she noted, isn’t usually bad intent. “Engineers, when they’ve got access to the information, they want to use it. That’s a wonderful natural trait of engineers.” But when that information was shared under an NDA or collaboration agreement that restricts its use, acting on it without regard to those restrictions creates real legal exposure. Teesdale pointed to a growing trend in litigation around misuse of confidential information, with larger damages awards in cases where this is the central issue.

Her recommended fix is primarily one of education and awareness: making sure the people who have access to third-party confidential information understand what they can and can’t do with it. She describes this as one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost risk reduction tools available to any company operating in a collaborative environment.

Future-Proofing the Agreement

Beyond the confidential information question, Teesdale’s broader argument is that collaboration agreements need to be treated as strategic documents, not just legal ones, and that the time to think carefully about their terms is before the project begins.

“Everyone wants these projects to go well,” she said. “But you do have to bear in mind that this is a collaboration between two companies that have quite often different business objectives. They are not a single entity, they don’t have the same mission in mind of where they want to go, and sometimes they can conflict.”

She walks through another hypothetical in which two companies agree to divide ownership of the IP they jointly develop. Five years after the collaboration ends, one party wants to bring a product to market that depends on both sets of IP. Without a license or ongoing cooperation from the other party, they can’t.

“Rewind the clock,” Teesdale said. “If you’re trying to negotiate that collaboration agreement, the person on your side would be thinking, ‘What do we want to be doing in five years’ time, ten years’ time? Do we want to still be tied to this partner in that way?’”

A Practical Framework

Teesdale’s three practical recommendations for IP professionals advising clients in collaborative environments:

1. Raise awareness inside the organization about what third-party confidential information can and can’t be used for
2. Get involved in reviewing collaboration terms early, well before the project begins
3. Support project teams on an ongoing basis, so that IP considerations are part of how work gets done rather than an afterthought

“Make sure the collaboration is set up to allow for the fact that these companies have different aims,” she said, “That’s effectively future-proofing what these companies want to do.”

IP Innovators is proudly sponsored by DeepIP—the patent intelligence platform for in-house teams and external counsel. Learn more at deepip.ai.