When should a startup prepare IP for due diligence?

Ideally three to six months before the raise, because assignments and refilings take time. After a term sheet it is still worthwhile, triaged in deal order.

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IP for fundraising · Fixed fee · Before your raise

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Q: What does IP due diligence for startups cover?

Four areas decide it: chain of title (founder, employee and contractor assignments), whether filings cover the product actually being sold, open-source licence exposure, and freedom-to-operate red flags.

IP due diligence for startups, run from your side of the table: we find the assignment gaps, title breaks, open-source exposure and filing holes before your investors' lawyers do, and close them, documented in a memo their counsel will accept.

Get diligence-ready: quote in 24h All startup products

What does IP due diligence for startups cover? Four things decide it: chain of title (founder, employee and contractor assignments), whether filings actually cover the product being sold, open-source licence exposure in the codebase, and freedom-to-operate red flags. Problems in any of them don't usually kill a deal: they reprice it, or stall it at the worst possible moment.

The four deal-breakers

What investors' lawyers actually check

Chain of title

Did every person who wrote code or invented anything assign it to the company, in writing? The most common (and most fixable) failure.

Coverage

Do your filings cover the product you're selling today, or the prototype from two pivots ago?

Open source

Copyleft licences in the wrong layer of the stack. A repo manifest scan finds it in hours; a diligence finding costs weeks.

FTO red flags

Third-party rights your product might collide with: better raised by your counsel with a plan than by theirs with a price cut.

The deliverable: every gap fixed where fixable, flagged with a mitigation plan where not, and a clean IP summary memo for your data room, written the way diligence counsel expect to read it.

FAQs

IP due diligence: common questions

Three to six months before the raise is ideal: assignments and refilings take time. Post-term-sheet is still worth it: we triage in deal order and fix the loudest items first.

Usually yes: confirmatory assignments, work-order paper trails and, where someone is unreachable, documented mitigation that diligence counsel will accept. Unfixable is rare; unaddressed is fatal.

Identical work, higher stakes: acquirers diligence IP harder than VCs. Same product, same memo, scoped to the deal.

Raising in the next six months?

Tell us the stage and the timeline. Fixed-fee quote in 24 hours, and an honest view of how much cleanup your data room actually needs.

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Their lawyers will look.Get there first.