Operationalizing the Invisible Asset: RevOps Guide to IP Strategy and Valuation | Kary Oberbrunner

Brendon Dennewill sits down with Kary Oberbrunner, founder of Instant IP and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, to explore what it actually takes to protect and scale your ideas before a competitor or AI model forces your hand. Kary brings a disruptive perspective rooted in intellectual property law and blockchain technology, and his message is clear: every company is already an IP company, whether they realize it or not. Most organizations aren't held back by a lack of innovation. They're held back by failing to treat their invisible, intangible assets with the same rigor as their physical property.

The conversation takes a sharp turn into the immediate risks of generative AI as Kary shares how large language models are actively scraping unprotected frameworks and methodologies. He and Brendon explore the tension between an abundant, open-source mindset and the strategic necessity of a defensive IP posture, while unpacking how leaders can use a disciplined "publish, protect, promote" sequence to avoid having their life's work stolen or facing costly rebrands. Moving from defense to offense, Kary details how businesses can operationalize these assets into scalable revenue engines through franchising, licensing, and certification programs.

This episode is essential listening for RevOps leaders, founders, and executives who want to build a comprehensive IP strategy that drives enterprise valuation and secures their competitive advantage for the long term.

Read the full transcript.

What You'll Learn

• Why thinking "I'm not an IP company" makes you a commodity
• The shift from 17% to 90% intangible asset value in the S&P 500
• The offensive vs. defensive sides of IP strategy
• Why using "TM" may actually invite theft
• How AI is creating a new category of IP risk
• The "publish, protect, promote" flywheel
• 12 steps to becoming an IP company

Resources Mentioned

• Instant IP 

• IP Toolbox
• "You Are an IP Company" by Kary Oberbrunner and Katie Robino
• USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office)
• Story Brand by Donald Miller
• Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni   
  
• Strategic Coach by Dan Sullivan 
• Suno
• Plaud AI
• Meta Glasses

Listen

About the Guest

Episode Transcript 

Introducing Kary Oberbrunner

Brendon Dennewill: Today I'm joined by Kary Oberbrunner, founder of Instant IP, entrepreneur, futurist, and Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of 14 books. As CEO of Igniting Souls and creator of Instant IP, Kary helps entrepreneurs, creators, and business leaders protect, position, and monetize their intellectual property in the age of AI. His work focuses on helping organizations turn ideas into scalable business assets through publishing, branding, systems thinking, and blockchain-powered IP protection.

Kary is a speaker and advisor on leadership, entrepreneurship, AI, blockchain, and innovation, and his work is featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, CBS, Fox, Yahoo, and other major media outlets. Kary, welcome to the podcast.

Kary Oberbrunner: It's great to be here, my friend.

Every Company Is an IP Company

Brendon Dennewill: You've written a book on this topic. Working in the franchise space, IP is built into franchising because that's really where so much of the value comes from. But let's talk more generally. What shifts when leaders start thinking that their company is an IP company?

Kary Oberbrunner: The book is called You Are an IP Company, and I co-wrote it with my IP lawyer, Katie. She's the IP professional; I'm the IP practitioner. We titled it the way we did to interrupt people's identity. It's supposed to be a little controversial, because you might have that book hit an HVAC company and they say, "No, we're not an IP company, we're an HVAC company," or "We sell smoothies." We want it to be a little disruptive, because the problem is that if you don't take your IP seriously, people won't take you seriously.

I also teach entrepreneurship at the university level, and we talk about differentiation. If somebody thinks, "I'm not an IP company, I just install furnaces," okay, that's why you are a commodity. That's why you're replaceable. With that mindset, you've just said we're not different than anybody else.

But here's the cool thing, Brendon. When I sit down with the furnace company, the HVAC company, the smoothie company, I start drawing things out of them. Let's talk about your menu. Let's talk about the names of your smoothies. Let's talk about your pricing, your loyalty program, your processes, your systems. You mentioned franchising. Even the Speedy Service System at McDonald's was licensed as IP. You might say they're just a burger joint, but they actually created an IP system that's very valuable. So it's not that people don't have IP; it's that they don't realize they have it.

Brendon Dennewill: Yeah. I went through that same mental process. When I read the book and heard you speak, you took us through this process of identifying where you most likely have IP. I was in a room with maybe 150 people and everyone was just making notes of all their IP, which they hadn't really thought about before. I can recommend anyone go through that process, and starting with your book is a really good place to start.

Kary Oberbrunner: We've also created free tools at instantip.today. It's called the IP Toolbox. You scroll down, hit "Find My IP," enter your URL and your about section from your website, and 60 seconds later it will literally say: here's all the IP we think you have, here's the white space you could develop, and here's what's at risk because AI scraping your website could potentially lock you out of your own ideas.

That's really why I'm passionate about this. Most of the time I meet generous people. The problem is a lot of them think, "I don't care if my competitor steals from me." I hear that all the time. But what we're seeing now, and I could give you examples in the fireplace industry and with musicians, if you don't protect your IP, it's almost like a house with the front door open. There's this squatting rule where someone can take over and lock you out. We've seen this happen.

You can do traditional patents, copyrights, and trademarks, or you can use Instant IP, which is a smart contract that reduces the time and cost. Just by putting a fence around your house, it prevents theft. People say, "This person put a fence around their house, they have a guard dog, they have a ring camera." You don't want to take people to court. You want people to respect your boundary.

The "I Don't Care If They Steal My Ideas" Objection

Brendon Dennewill: I've heard a lot of people say, "I don't care if people steal my ideas because I have an abundant mindset." You only have to ask one or two questions and they very quickly change how they were thinking. How do you respond to that?

Kary Oberbrunner: I say, "Let me see your car keys. Let me see your credit cards." The problem is we have something in our brain that says if it's invisible and intangible, it's not valuable. And that is the biggest business mistake you could ever make.

If you look at the S&P 500, the 500 most valuable brands on the planet, in 1975 only 17% of those assets were intangible. The things that were most valuable back then were land, inventory, physical equipment. By 2022 to 2026, we flipped to 90%. That means this iPhone right now: 10% is the parts and pieces, and the other 90% of the value is in the patents, trademarks, copyrights, and branding. We've moved from the information age to the digital age, and digital assets can move extremely fast.

Why do deep fakes exist? Because the person's NIL, their name, image, and likeness, has value. If we can confuse consumers about someone's identity, that confusion has value.

You might want to be generous, but if you ask for someone's car keys and drive off, they're going to care. Let me give you a real example. Our company is called Instant IP. I'm not allowed to say the name I previously had because of a potential lawsuit. But I went through all the right processes. I went through the USPTO, got a trademark. Then there's a 30-day oppositional period where the whole world can reach out and oppose a granted trademark. In that 30-day window, a multi-billion dollar company from Europe came out of the woodwork and said, "That name on all your shirts, your website, your brochures, your slide decks, your YouTube: you're going to pay us royalties for the rest of your life, or we're going to sue you, or you can rebrand."

I had to rebrand. Estimates are that cost me around $20,000, and that doesn't even account for the brand confusion. The longer you exist, the more brand value you've built up that now has to change. So I would say: if people don't think it's a big deal, just have somebody file your business name in your state and block you with a trademark or a patent. Suddenly you realize you're no longer free. And we all love the four freedoms that Strategic Coach talks about. If you don't feel free, that really starts messing with your confidence.

Brendon Dennewill: One of the important messages there is your example of why deep fakes exist. They wouldn't exist if what they were trying to fake wasn't valuable. I noticed, when I checked out your LinkedIn profile, that you've even trademarked your own name.

Kary Oberbrunner: I did. I thought, if I really believe in this IP stuff, I'm going to look at my whole business. So I actually created my own IP holding company. This is a very important strategy if you want to take your IP to the next level. There are tax advantages and legal shielding as well.

Let's say you get in a car accident. Somebody Googles your name and says, "Kary owns a business, Brendon owns a business, let's go after him." This happens all the time to celebrities. And I tell people: you don't protect your IP when you're big; you become big by protecting your IP.

You can shield your IP in an IP holding company and license it back to your operating company. It makes a lot of sense legally and from a tax standpoint. Even small things matter. I know of a young lady who went to Nike and said she'd developed a bra with a zipper pouch. Nike said they weren't interested. Sure enough, a couple of years later they developed her exact technology. Luckily, she had archived her IP audit trail and was able to say, "You guys stole that idea from me," and Nike had to pay her a settlement.

Why is Matthew McConaughey protecting himself from AI? Why did Taylor Swift do the same thing? They're just a few steps ahead of us, but you're going to start seeing a lot more people take this seriously because AI is a great tool that has opened the door to many amazing things, but AI will steal from you.

AI and the New IP Threat Landscape

Brendon Dennewill: I think what I like about what you're saying is that people need to be thinking about this very differently now because AI is essentially lighting this on fire and making it a much bigger issue than it was even a couple of years ago.

Kary Oberbrunner: Murphy Campbell, a banjo player: somebody fed her voice into Suno. Suno's terms and conditions say, "We own your voice if you upload." She's an Appalachian banjo player who wrote original songs, and she actually had to go through a lot of hoops because she was de-platformed from YouTube. The person who fed her voice in also claimed copyright on her songs that hadn't been registered, and now she's locked out of her own family's music. Rolling Stone picked up the story; you can Google Murphy Campbell. This is becoming quite a thing with athletes, celebrities, and entrepreneurs. It's a trillion-dollar-plus industry of theft around IP.

At business conferences, I started seeing people wearing AI pins like Plaud, and Meta glasses. We now live in a world where everyone could be watching us, recording what you're saying, not necessarily with bad motives, but they could be going back to their AI training model at the end of the day, plugging it in because they don't want to forget what they talked about. And now it's feeding all your IP into that large language model and you're at risk.

Brendon Dennewill: Were you at an event together when you first noticed that?

Kary Oberbrunner: I think you might have been there, actually.

IP as a Franchise Advantage

Brendon Dennewill: You're speaking very much to the protection and security side. But if we bring it back to something I mentioned at the beginning: one of the things that really excited us about getting into the franchise space is that IP is built into the power of franchising. In your book there were a few examples of franchise brands you've worked with. And of course, the common one that most people in the franchise space are familiar with is royalties, but there are so many others that even people who've been in franchising for a long time might not realize they could own.

Kary Oberbrunner: There are 47 ways of monetizing your IP. So yes, you nailed it: the offensive side, the money generation.

Brendon Dennewill: Right. There's the defensive IP play and then the offensive play. Ideally everybody's doing both.

Kary Oberbrunner: Case in point: Donald Miller wrote a book called StoryBrand. That one book he turned into a keynote, then AI software, then a certification. Now there's a StoryBrand Guide certification where he charges a fee to certify you and an annual fee to renew. Patrick Lencioni does the same thing with Working Genius. You get certified on the assessment. Kolby does it. Strategic Coach does it.

I could go through so many examples of people who certify and franchise. CrossFit: anybody can open a box gym, but when you use the CrossFit name, it comes with certain rights and privileges. And what's funny is that a lot of times people think IP is for the creator. IP was actually created for the consumer.

When I go to the store and pick up a prescription drug, how do I know that's actually Bayer aspirin unless there are IP controls in place? Anybody can slap on that logo. That's why pirating goods is so difficult: they're using the good name, but it's often an inferior product. IP actually helps the consumer not be duped into thinking they're getting one thing while paying for another.

Brendon Dennewill: And from a franchise IP perspective: when you're in a different state or country and you recognize a franchise but nothing else around you, you're going to go to the franchise because you've seen them before, you have trust, and you're most likely going to buy from them versus a brand you've never heard of.

Kary Oberbrunner: That's the brand value. Exactly. And it goes even further, down to colors and smells. This is called trade dress in the intellectual property world. Tiffany's blue is a real thing. John Deere's green and yellow: if somebody's filming a YouTube video complaining that their tractor broke down and it's green and yellow, you're going to think John Deere, even if it's not. Play-Doh has even protected its smell. Once your eyes are open to IP, you see it everywhere.

Athletic Greens has protected their name. And pharmaceutical generics are literally waiting in line for the 20-year patent to expire so they can ship the generic the very next morning. We can all be frustrated by expensive drugs, but if you Google how much it costs to bring a drug to market, it's astronomical: the research, the scientists, the FDA process. If there's no incentive to protect IP, you actually hurt your economy.

There's a Venetian act that was created where they said, if we want to attract men of great talent, we need to protect their intellectual property, otherwise they won't want to come to our city. It's almost like a socialism analogy: if ideas are just free for everybody and nobody should be compensated, you actually hurt your society because you take away the incentive.

Brendon Dennewill: I was already thinking about that. We were in Italy a few months ago and visited Modena, which is where Ferrari is. I'm guessing Ferrari red is also a protected color. Enzo Ferrari probably realized that when he was onto a good thing with a fast car in the right color, he'd want to protect it.

Kary Oberbrunner: I actually looked it up just now. It's called the Venetian Patent Statute. They wanted to attract new ingenious efforts. And Tony D'Angelo at Strategic Coach is so smart on this. He gets into all the history and talks about how it's even part of the Constitution.

Brendon Dennewill: I had him on the show a few months ago. For anyone who wants to go deeper from that historical perspective, Tony's a good person to follow. So Kary, as AI makes it easier to create and replicate content, how should founders and leaders in franchise businesses or any other business rethink intellectual property and competitive advantage?

How Founders Should Respond to the AI Threat

Kary Oberbrunner: Number one: assume that your audience is recording you and feeding your information into AI. Not necessarily maliciously, just practically speaking.

My TEDx took me over 100 hours of memorizing, rehearsing, and flying to the location. I spoke on IP protection and how blockchain through Instant IP creates an immutable timestamp in less than 60 seconds that nobody can change, not even you, and that can be used in a court of law to prove first use. Then I went to write my book and needed to reference the location of my TEDx. All of a sudden, on Google, some guy's article showed up. I started reading and realized it was my exact TEDx talk, and the guy was claiming it as his article.

The first thing you do in that situation is screenshot it, because you don't know how they're going to respond once you contact them. They might deny it. I screenshotted the whole page, contacted him, heard nothing. So I wrote a LinkedIn article: "Have you ever had your IP stolen?" Hours later the guy showed up on LinkedIn. He said he was a filmmaker and a celebrity in the country of Georgia, and that his team had started using AI to write articles and had no idea it was my TEDx. I believed him. A lot of people make this mistake without bad intentions.

But here's the point: I'm currently in a lawsuit with Anthropic. I'm one of those 500,000 authors whose books were stolen by Anthropic. I'm not against AI. I use AI today. But when 500,000 books are stolen and the authors spent their lives writing them and get zero compensation, while the company is valued at billions because they trained on our data, and our original work is now being served up in prompts so users think their prompt produced an amazing new framework: that's theft. Anthropic is now in the largest copyright lawsuit of all time: $1.5 billion. I'll end up getting $3,000 per book, so about $9,000 for some of the books stolen. It won't move the needle for me, but I feel bad for authors who are bootstrapping their business. That could really mess them up.

So to your original question: what do founders do? Assume their IP is going to be stolen and protect it accordingly. We've given everyone a free IP credit at Instant IP. The high dive is a patent: $30,000 and one to three years. Get in the kiddie pool first.

Here's my test: if tomorrow you wake up and that idea is stolen and you're locked out of it, would you emotionally care? If the answer is no, don't protect it. Your second credit will cost you $97. I take my trash out to the curb every Thursday. Do I care if anyone steals my trash? No, take it. But some ideas I don't want people to take, and more importantly, I don't want to be locked out of them. That's where you really get into trouble. It's your genius. That's not fair.

Brendon Dennewill: That's a good way to frame it. If you care about it one way or another, protect it. I've used Instant IP to do the same thing.

Kary Oberbrunner: I used it yesterday. I had a big post going out this morning. I knew I had something hot. So I went through this flywheel: publish, protect, then promote and profit. If you skip straight to promote and profit, you leave yourself vulnerable. Dan Sullivan, our coach, says the number one thing to protect is your confidence. By following this flywheel, you gain clarity, confidence, credibility, and then capital.

And notice: we put the superscript IP there. Why? Because we file this in 38 countries around the world. People think that using a TM is good enough. Here's the thing, Brendon: don't ever use a TM. A TM is an unregistered trademark. When somebody uses a TM, they're telling their competitors, "I think this is valuable, but I haven't done anything to protect it." It's almost like saying there's gold in the house but the front door's open.

The other problem with a TM is that if you slap it on something you think is original and it actually isn't, you're now infringing. Instead, use a superscript IP, which tells the world this is protected by blockchain technology. I've taken a step to protect it.

It's called a certification mark, a classification of IP, like Idaho Potatoes. Nobody can stamp the Idaho Potatoes mark on anything unless the Idaho Potato certifier approves it. Same with our superscript IP: nobody can use it unless they've gone through Instant IP.

Brendon Dennewill: For those listening and not watching: the superscript IP, similar to the superscript R or the superscript TM, which you're saying we shouldn't use since it's basically an invitation to go steal something. If there's a superscript IP next to a name, that means it's protected by Instant IP and blockchain.

Kary Oberbrunner: Exactly. The R is great. I have an R around Instant IP and an R around Igniting Souls. I save the R for things that are really important. It's like: do you just put a deadbolt on your house, or do you put a deadbolt, a ring camera, a guard dog, and a fence? If something's very valuable, you use IP stacking.

Take Apple: they trademarked the logo, patented iPhone technology with multiple patents, and put a copyright on the user manual. Apple is one of the most valuable brands on the planet because they used IP stacking and IP marking to discourage theft.

And here's what's really cool: you want to develop a reputation that you take your IP seriously. We've actually seen back-of-room sales increase significantly when somebody starts their talk and the emcee says, "Just know that everything this speaker is about to share has been protected with blockchain technology through Instant IP." Then a lock icon shows on the screen. When you step up on stage, the audience puts down their phones, grabs a pen, leans in, and takes it seriously. At the end, when you say, "Scan the QR code to set up a clarity call," everyone's scanning it. Why? Because you modeled the way and showed you take your stuff seriously.

The alternative is saying, "Hey, if you liked today, I'll just send you my slide deck." That tells people you don't value what you've created. And you need to value your IP because it is valuable. In Strategic Coach, they talk about how your company's valuation is higher when you've identified your IP.

Brendon Dennewill: We've also heard, probably in the last year more so, from entrepreneurs who've recently sold their businesses and are in the room when we start talking about the value of IP that they didn't have valued in the sale. The number I use right now is 20%. A $50 million business could have actually sold for $60 million and still potentially had royalties on the back end because they just weren't thinking about it.

Kary Oberbrunner: And even Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant: Kobe's merchandise is still being sold, Michael Jackson's songs are still making money. Your IP will actually outlive you. C.S. Lewis has been dead for 60 or 70 years, but his books are still an intangible asset paying his descendants royalties.

Brendon Dennewill: I'm based in Minneapolis. Prince, of course, was one of the great sons of this city. When you fly in and out of MSP airport, there's actually a Prince store where you can buy all kinds of Prince paraphernalia, all protected by IP, and it will continue to generate value for his estate.

Kary Oberbrunner: You'll have to fact-check me on this, but I really believe he had to rename himself "the Artist Formerly Known as Prince" because of IP issues. And Taylor Swift re-recorded "Taylor's Version" of her music because she had sold the rights. People don't think IP is that interesting until they start seeing it everywhere, and then they're like, "This is kind of cool."

Brendon Dennewill: If people don't take anything else away from this conversation, take this: 40 or 50 years ago, less than 20% of the total value of S&P 500 companies was in their IP. Today it's 90%. That should be enough to get someone thinking.

Balancing Structure and Innovation as Companies Scale

Kary Oberbrunner: And it's funny: once students start talking about IP and entrepreneurship, Gen Z tends to think, "IP, that's for old people." I look out at the audience and say, "Let's look at your Oala drink container, your Adidas shoes, your Apple Watch." And they say, "My gosh, I'm wearing IP everywhere." And that's not even counting their phone, which has all kinds of apps and Mr. Beast content they've subscribed to. You don't see IP until you see it, and then you realize it's everywhere.

So I'd encourage people: read the book, get a free credit at instantip.app, and check out the free tools at instantip.today where you can find your IP, name it, and price it, all without an email opt-in.

Brendon Dennewill: Thanks, Kary. As we start landing the plane here: scaling companies need structure, but too much structure slows innovation. How have you balanced or helped others balance operational consistency with flexibility as a business grows?

Kary Oberbrunner: I'm going to walk through the You Are an IP Company 12-step framework. I co-authored it with Katie Rabino on purpose. She has the law degree, so everything in this book has been filtered through the question: will this hold up in court?

Step one is visualize. You first have to think, "Wait, I am an IP company. I have IP." Step two is organize. Most of your brand assets are in the attic and you can't even find them. We help you take inventory of your past, present, and future IP. Step three is systematize. I wrote a blog post this morning. Before I did, I protected it on Instant IP last night: publish, protect, then promote. That's already generated some sales today. The big mistake is going publish, promote, skipping the protect step.

Step four is normalize. Teach your team. Some companies we work with have created IP awards. Instead of employees hiding IP and thinking they'll take it when they leave, they're now saying, "We're going to reward you for it." Whoever's got the best IP gets recognized at the annual IP awards, maybe a $25 or $50 bump. That's normalizing it.

Step five is specialize. You can't be everything. Mr. Beast isn't everything. Taylor Swift isn't everything. Step six, from our friend Chad Jenkins, is name the baby: verbalize it with something unique. Step seven is digitize, and that's where Instant IP is a great first start.

We're not saying never patent, never trademark, never copyright. It's like saying a hammer can do everything. A hammer does certain things, a saw does certain things, a screwdriver does certain things. Instant IP is a tool, and in the right situation it makes a ton of sense, as does a patent.

Step eight is monetize, which is the exciting part. Franchising is a great example. Step nine is maximize: keep competitors on your radar. Does Arby's know what McDonald's is doing? Absolutely. They know what makes McDonald's unique, and they're creating differentiation in response, not copying.

Step ten is evangelize, which is the marketing side. Step eleven is globalize: we filed the superscript IP in 38 countries because we don't want anyone using it in another country. Step twelve is optimize: freedom, finances, and fulfillment.

The book takes a case study for each company: Magnolia, Disney, CrossFit, and does a deep dive on each.

The Future of IP in an AI World

Brendon Dennewill: That's going to be really good to dig into further. Kary, as we do land the plane: looking ahead, how do you see AI reshaping ownership, creativity, and the future value of intellectual property?

Kary Oberbrunner: This gets into the mission behind why I'm so passionate about Instant IP. I believe we're at a tipping point as a species. I've seen a shift where people say, "Why create? AI is going to steal it anyway," or "I can never compete with AI, I'll just settle for being a consumer."

When we shift as a society from creators to consumers, for whatever reason, I think we lose as a species. My desire is for Instant IP to grow in order to give creators the incentive and the confidence to keep creating. And to say: what I feed into AI, I don't have to worry it's going to be stolen and served up as someone else's output. Because even if it is, I have an immutable timestamp where I can fight back. Just like I'm in a lawsuit with Anthropic right now: they're being held accountable. Meta is being held accountable. Suno is being held accountable. We need to hold these companies accountable. Otherwise, if everyone can just scrape everyone's stuff, claim it as their own, make billions, and let the creators suffer, you're going to hurt your society. People are going to say, "I'm not going to create life-saving drugs or life-saving technologies anymore." We need to reestablish IP protection. I love AI and I'm not against it, but it needs to provide attribution.

Brendon Dennewill: It sounds like the real differentiator here is creativity. Without creativity, who do we become?

Kary Oberbrunner: Just consumers. We become like some of those movies where we're plugged into the Matrix and entertained to death. I love the Theodore Roosevelt quote about the man in the arena: "I might taste defeat, but at least I'm in the game." That's where life is, not sitting on the bench consuming.

Brendon Dennewill: Extending the Matrix analogy: you want to make sure we continue to have a choice between the blue pill and the red pill, and not just be handed one and told, "Here you go."

Kary Oberbrunner: Exactly. I'm a faith guy, and I believe God created us with a unique purpose. We are co-creators made in God's image. When we lose our creativity, I think we are choosing our own downfall as a species if that's what we settle for.

Brendon Dennewill: The next step is: create, and then take action to protect what you've created. Because any creation that's not put into the world doesn't actually do anything, and protecting it is one of the first action steps to make that real.

Kary Oberbrunner: You've nailed it. It's exciting and it's simple. We don't need to overcomplicate it. Once people start throwing around legalese, my heart sinks a little bit, because I have Instant IP on my phone. Ideas come to me on the fly. I can speak it, text it, take a picture, and that IP is protected. Then I keep moving and creating.

Brendon Dennewill: Kary, that was awesome. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Kary Oberbrunner: Thanks for having me.

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