What are legal challenges to open innovation?

Regardless of which aspect of new open innovation project you are working on, you need to be mindful of your participants' legal rights and obligations. Having a legal best practice like terms and conditions for participations set in place before beginning an open innovation effort is vital.

Intellectual property law intends to ensure an inventor is credited while also allowing them to profit from their ideas. With open innovation, however, it is possible that the innovator will need to rescind their rights to an idea.

Companies or individuals submitting solutions must be sure that the process is fair and transparent and that the legal bases and ownership terms are covered.