• Conducting an IP Audit - IP Toolbox [Australian Government] – - The Australian Government provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide to performing an IP Audit. An IP audit is a systematic review of the IP owned, used or acquired by a company. An audit’s principal goal is to identify all the IP your company may have.
• Don’t leave money on the table: Run an IP audit [Massachusetts Biotech and Technology News] – - An IP audit is a periodic and systematic review of the IP owned, used or acquired by a business. Its purpose is to inventory all IP owned, licensed or acquired by the company, to project the future cost and value associated with each piece of IP, to mine underused corporate assets, to identify any threats to a company’s bottom line, and to enable business executives to devise informed strategies that will maintain and improve the company’s market position.
• An IP Audit Of Spongebob Squarepants [Erik J. Heels] – - Erik performs an informative comprehensive IP audit based on the pretext that Spongebob’s creator Stephen Hillenburg has contacted Erick for advice about protecting his IP related to Spongebob Squarepants.
• Top 5 IP audit mistakes [IP Thinktank Blog] – - #4 “Too much focus on protecting new IP and too little on exploiting or killing what you have.”
• The IP Management Audit: Start Top-down, Then Across [IP Frontline] – - A checklist that every IP audit manager needs as a starting point – the what, where, who and how of initiating a company-wide intellectual property management audit.
• IP Audit - A “How to” Guide. [ WIPO] – - “An IP Audit is defined as a systematic review of the IP assets owned, used or acquired by a business. Its purpose is to uncover under-utilized IP assets, to identify any threats to a company’s bottom line, and to enable business planners to devise informed strategies that will maintain and improve the company’s market position.”

The pilot only applies to applications classified in Class 709 (electrical computers and digital processing systems: multi-computer data transferring) and applications in Class 707 (data processing: database and file management or data structures.

In all other cases, MPEP 713.02 applies to allow pre-examination interviews at the descretion of the Examiner.