The IP Works™ by Devon
On-Demand IP Management & Strategy

Most businesses are sitting on value they've never claimed.

The IP Works™ is an independent IP practice built for businesses that take their intangible assets seriously, or have just realised they should. Strategy, protection and portfolio management, delivered personally as your own on-demand IP manager.

Enquire Approach

The most valuable things your business owns don't appear on its balance sheet. The brand. The know-how. The designs, the data, the inventions. We believe IP is not a legal cost to be endured, but an asset class to be worked as hard as everything else in the business.

No. 1 · Identify

First, we take inventory.

Every business creates IP daily: in engineering, in marketing, in the way work actually gets done. Most of it goes unrecorded, unowned, or quietly walks out of the door with suppliers and departing staff. We begin with a discreet, thorough audit of what you have, what you think you own but don't, and where the value truly sits.

  • i.A full audit across brands, inventions, designs, content, data and know-how
  • ii.Ownership verified: employee, contractor and supplier chain-of-title
  • iii.A living IP register your board can read over coffee
No. 2 · Protect

The right rights, in the right places, and only those.

Protection is not "file everything, everywhere." It is a portfolio designed around your commercial plan: registered rights where they earn their keep, trade secrets where filing would give the game away, and contracts that capture IP at every interface: employees, contractors, suppliers, partners and customers.

  • i.Filing strategy across trade marks, patents and designs, matched to markets and budget
  • ii.Trade secret and know-how protocols that hold up under pressure
  • iii.NDAs, licences and commercial terms that keep ownership where it belongs
No. 3 · Leverage

Protected IP earns. Strategic IP negotiates.

This is where most businesses stop short. A managed portfolio is not a filing cabinet. It is leverage. It licenses into markets you'll never build yourself. It anchors partnerships on your terms. It deters copycats before the lawyers are ever called. And it changes the tone of every negotiation you walk into.

  • i.Licensing and royalty structures that open revenue without opening your IP
  • ii.Freedom-to-operate and competitor intelligence before you commit capital
  • iii.Enforcement proportionate to the threat, and to your budget
No. 4 · Realise

When it matters most, IP is the multiple.

Fundraising. Acquisition. Exit. These are the moments when years of quiet IP discipline are paid out, or when their absence is priced in. Investors and acquirers run IP due diligence as standard; gaps in ownership and registration become discounts, escrows and walked deals. A clean, strategic portfolio does the opposite: it justifies the premium.

  • i.Investment- and exit-readiness: diligence done before the buyer does it to you
  • ii.IP positioning in the equity story: what you own, and why it's defensible
  • iii.Valuation support: making the intangible legible to those writing cheques
The Service

A complete IP department. Without the department.

Everything an in-house IP function provides, delivered on demand: a fixed number of days each month, scaled to the moment.

IP Strategy No. i

An IP strategy aligned to your commercial objectives, reviewed each quarter, and reported in a form your board can read in five minutes.

Portfolio Management No. ii

Ongoing care of trade marks, patents, designs and trade secrets: filings, renewals, oppositions and the records behind them, worldwide.

Counsel & Fee Management No. iii

Selection and management of external attorneys and renewal providers, with the fee discipline of someone who has sat on the client's side of those invoices.

Contracts & Commercial No. iv

NDAs, licences, supply, development and employment terms drafted and reviewed so IP is captured and kept at every commercial interface.

Innovation Capture No. v

Training and simple processes that turn your engineers, designers and marketers into a steady source of protectable assets.

Engagements

Same discipline. Different stage.

The principles don't change between a two-founder startup and a listed group. The priorities do. Choose the engagement that suits the business you are today.

The Drawing Board
Startups & Scale-ups

Founders rarely have an IP problem until the term sheet arrives. Get ownership, filings and contracts right early, at startup cost rather than law-firm cost.

  • Founder & contractor IP assignment, done properly
  • Lean filing strategy that survives investor diligence
  • Brand clearance before the name is everywhere
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The Works Retainer
SMEs & Mid-Market

Most SMEs own more IP than they realise and manage less of it than they should. We bring it under one strategy and put it to work commercially.

  • Portfolio rationalisation: keep what earns, cut what doesn't
  • Licensing, partnership and supply-chain IP terms
  • An IP function without an IP headcount
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The Engine Room
Large Corporations

In-house teams know the feeling: more portfolio than people. Senior, hands-on support with no onboarding curve and no permanent overhead.

  • Project leadership: audits, disputes, integrations, counsel reviews
  • Interim cover at manager level
  • Process & systems: registers, dashboards, disclosure pipelines
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The On-Demand Model

Senior IP leadership, sized to the business you actually are.

There are three ways to staff the IP problem. Two of them are priced for someone else's balance sheet.

The Law Firm

Excellent at the matter in front of them; not retained to think about your business between matters. Advice arrives by the six-minute unit, and strategy is nobody's line item.

The IP Works

Embedded, accountable and continuous: strategy, portfolio, contracts and counsel management as one function. A day or two a month when things are steady; more when they aren't. You pay for an outcome, not an org chart.

The Full-Time Hire

The right answer for some businesses, at the right time, and we'll tell you honestly when you've reached it. Until then, the salary, recruitment and management overhead is a significant commitment to make too soon.

The Paddock

The IP Works™ has a reading room.

Scrutineering. The Pit Wall. The Gravel Trap. Three columns of plain-English writing on intellectual property, opening autumn 2026.

Enter the Paddock

Devon McIlwaine, founder of The IP Works™
The Consultant

In-house instincts. Independent delivery.

The IP Works™ is led by Devon McIlwaine, whose career has been spent inside the rooms where IP decisions are actually made: at Allen & Overy and Mills & Reeve on the law firm side, and in-house at BP, Williams F1, Williams Advanced Engineering and Volex. Formula 1 taught us speed and secrecy. Energy taught us scale. Global manufacturing taught us how IP lives, and leaks, across borders, suppliers and factory floors.

We work with a deliberately small number of clients at any one time, so the capacity you get is genuine and ring-fenced, never the thin end of an overstretched practice.

The IP Works™ exists because IP is one of the most overlooked sources of value in business. We have watched project engineers handed the IP register on top of the day job. Commercial teams who discover IP only when a deal puts it under the microscope, too late for it to be impactful. In-house teams too stretched to step back from their own priorities. Underneath almost every one sits the same problem: the business cannot see what its IP is worth or how it maps to the commercial plan. Visibility comes first. Value follows.

We are not a law firm, and we do not bill like one. Our craft is the client side of the legal relationship: knowing precisely when attorneys and solicitors are needed, instructing the right ones, and managing their work and their fees so every pound spent on IP earns its keep. And because value is the point, we speak the language of the people who measure it: boards, investors, lenders and acquirers.

  • Career spanning Allen & Overy, Mills & Reeve, BP, Williams F1, Williams Advanced Engineering and Volex
  • Multi-jurisdiction portfolio, filing, opposition and enforcement strategy
  • Attorney and counsel selection, instruction and fee control worldwide
  • IP value mapping, due diligence and board-level reporting
  • Commercial contracts, licensing, trade secrets and innovation capture

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Enquiries

Let's find out what your business actually owns.

Begin with a private IP value review: a structured conversation about your assets, your gaps and your options, plus a one-page summary that is yours to keep either way.

dev@theipworks.com