How Investors Evaluate Intellectual Property Strategy in AgTech

By Joshua Goldberg

In practice, the most effective intellectual property strategies often combine patents and trade
secrets. Hybrid approaches allow companies to capture the advantages of both forms of
protection. This is particularly true for AgTech, as discussed across this series of articles.
Investors conducting due diligence on agricultural technology companies typically evaluate
several key factors.

Alignment With Business Strategy

Intellectual property portfolios should align with the company’s commercialization plans.
Investors examine whether patents and/or trade secrets protect the core technologies that
generate value. Also at issue, for plant based inventions, is whether other, non-traditional forms
of intellectual property protection come into play, like plant patents or plant variety certificates.

Ownership and Inventorship

Clear ownership documentation is essential. Investors need assurance that the company
actually owns the intellectual property it claims to own.
It is also important to, at the least, keep track of all the inventors and, if they leave the company,
to have all important documents signed by the inventor in advance. A loss of IP rights is entirely
possible if this does not happen, especially in a field with as much person movement as
agriculture.

Organizational Risk

Employee turnover and internal confidentiality practices can influence the security of trade
secrets. Investors evaluate whether companies maintain appropriate controls to protect
proprietary knowledge.

Freedom to Operate

Companies must ensure their technologies do not infringe on existing patents. Freedom-to-
operate analyses are therefore an important part of due diligence.

Exit Alignment

Finally, investors consider how intellectual property will influence potential exit opportunities.
Strong portfolios can significantly increase acquisition value by providing strategic advantages
to buyers.

As agricultural technology continues to expand, intellectual property strategy increasingly
determines which companies succeed. The most successful AgTech companies protect not only
individual inventions but also the broader ecosystem of knowledge, data, and processes that
drive innovation.

Investors, founders, and research institutions navigating agricultural innovation should
understand how intellectual property influences valuation, risk, and exit potential. The author
provides strategic insight to organizations seeking to build defensible and scalable intellectual
property portfolios in emerging agricultural technologies.