Business
Check the IP Health of Your Startup or SME
Twelve questions covering ownership, filings, confidentiality, records and readiness. You get a 0–100 maturity score, a category breakdown, and a prioritised list of gaps — with the reason each one matters and what fixing it looks like.
What the twelve questions cover
The audit areas, and why each matters
Visibility · weight 10
Do you have a written list of the IP your business owns or uses — names, logos, products, content, software, know-how?
You cannot protect, renew, license or defend assets you have not identified. An inventory is the foundation of everything else.
Ownership · weight 12
Have founders and employees signed written agreements assigning work-related IP to the company?
Without written assignment, work created by founders before incorporation — and some employee and moonlighting work — may not belong to the company at all. This is the single most common deal-breaker in Indian startup due diligence.
Ownership · weight 8
When consultants, freelancers, or agencies create for you (logos, code, content, designs), do written contracts assign the IP to you?
In India, an independent contractor generally keeps copyright in what they create unless a written contract says otherwise — paying for it is not enough.
Brand & identity · weight 10
Is your main brand name (and logo, if distinctive) registered — or at least applied for — as a trademark in the classes you trade in?
Registration converts your name from something you must prove rights in, into a registered right you can enforce and renew. India's register also blocks confusingly similar later filings.
Brand & identity · weight 5
Do you control your brand's digital identity — domains, key social handles, and marketplace seller names?
Domains and handles are contractual assets, not IP rights — but losing them to squatters or a departed employee's personal account is a common and avoidable crisis.
Confidentiality · weight 8
Before showing new inventions, designs, or products publicly (demos, pitches, exhibitions, sales), do you check what protection must be filed first?
Public disclosure before filing can permanently destroy patent and design novelty in India. One enthusiastic launch post can close the door on protection.
Records & renewals · weight 5
For your designs and creative content, do you keep dated records of creation — files, drafts, versions, who made what?
Copyright and design disputes turn on who created what, when. Dated records are cheap insurance that is impossible to recreate later.
Confidentiality · weight 10
Are your confidential materials (formulas, pricing, client lists, methods, data) protected by NDAs, access limits and marked documents?
India protects trade secrets through contracts and conduct, not registration. If you cannot show you treated something as secret, the law is unlikely to treat it as one.
Records & renewals · weight 6
If software matters to your business: do you know what code you own, what is open source, and under what licences?
Open-source licence obligations (especially copyleft) and unclear code ownership are standard diligence questions for any tech-enabled business — and unfixable in a hurry.
Registrations · weight 10
Looking at what you actually make and sell — are the protectable assets (inventions, brands, designs) actually filed or registered?
The commonest Indian SME pattern is real, protectable assets with zero filings. Every unfiled asset is protected only by silence or luck.
Records & renewals · weight 10
Do you track renewal and maintenance deadlines for every registered right (trademark renewals, patent annuities, design extensions)?
Registered rights die quietly. A missed trademark renewal or patent annuity can end years of protection over a calendar entry.
Commercial readiness · weight 6
Could you hand an investor or licensee a clean IP file tomorrow — registrations, ownership chain, contracts, no surprises?
IP value is realised at moments of scrutiny: fundraising, licensing, acquisition. Readiness is the difference between IP as an asset and IP as a discount.
Health Check FAQ
Scores, weights and what next
Want the gaps closed?
Most gaps this check finds are fixable paperwork — assignments, NDAs, filings, renewal systems. MYCrave's team closes them for businesses every week.
How is the score calculated?
Each question has a published weight (they total 100) and each answer a multiplier from 0 to 1. Your score is the weighted sum, shown with the per-category breakdown. Questions you mark "not applicable" are removed and the rest renormalised, so the score stays out of 100.
Is my data or score sent to MYCrave?
No. The check runs in your browser and nothing you answer is transmitted or stored on our servers. If you want MYCrave's help, you choose to make contact — the tool never does it for you.
We're tiny — is this overkill?
The smaller the business, the cheaper the fixes — and the more painful the later surprise. Founder assignments and basic NDAs cost little now and are the first things investors and acquirers ask about later.
Can I get the report as a PDF by email?
Emailed reports are not enabled yet — the full result appears on screen and you can print or save it as a PDF from your browser. When email delivery launches, it will be optional and consent-based, never a gate on the result.