Three companies, three very different IP playbooks. A top-10 global dairy brand patents individual probiotic strains and prints the story on packaging to justify a premium. A food-traceability startup patents its core process but keeps its actual signature method a trade secret, refreshed yearly to catch counterfeits. A local kopi-brewing startup can't patent its process at all, so recipe, hardware tweaks and a registered trademark do the heavy lifting instead.

Despite the size gap, the panel lands on the same warning: IP gets treated as a box to tick, filed and forgotten, instead of an asset that needs an active go-to-market plan. Getting granted is the easy part. Figuring out whether that patent should drive pricing, unlock licensing revenue, or protect a supply chain is the part founders skip.

For anyone weighing whether to patent, trademark, or just keep quiet about how something is made, the panel's breakdown of costs, timelines and trade-offs is a useful gut check.

Guests:

• Dr Eugene Ho, Director of Research and Intellectual Property, Inner Mongolia Mengniu Dairy
• Loh Jian Yuan, Chief Operating Officer, Kopi Near Me Pte Ltd
• Alrik Tan, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer, Natural Trace Private Limited

What's currently sitting in a business unprotected: is it because it's not worth protecting, or because no one's gotten around to it?

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