Seminar

The business side of software: Intellectual property, legal and tax insights

Learn to maximize the value of your software innovations with expert insights on intellectual property, legal aspects, and tax incentives.

Mastering Software Innovation: Legal, IP and Tax Essentials

Whether software is your core business or supports the digitalization of your services, products, design, manufacturing or administration, it plays a crucial role across all aspects of your company.
But building and using software is more than just technical expertise. It's also about creating and maximizing business value.
This seminar will dive deep into the legal, intellectual property, and tax strategies that are crucial for the success of your software developments. Learn how to protect, manage, and financially boost your innovations to ensure they thrive in today’s competitive landscape.

You’ll gain insights from experts (Calysta, Osborne Clarke and BDO) on how to safeguard your software with patents, copyright, and trade secrets, understand the legal frameworks for exploitation models like licensing and open-source, and unlock the financial advantages of tax incentives for R&D. Whether you're a startup, SME, or large company, these strategies will help you capture and sustain the full value of your software.

For whom

CEOs, COOs, CTOs, project leaders, scientific leaders, software developers, and others involved in developing, exploiting, or acquiring software tools, products, and services.

Key takeaways

How to protect software innovations with intellectual property rights
Legal frameworks for software exploitation models (licensing, open-source, etc.)
Tax incentives that boost financial benefits for software developments

Programme

Time	Subject	Speaker
13:00 - 14:00	Sandwich lunch
14:00 - 14:10	Welcome	Sirris & POD
14:10 - 15:00	Capturing value by protecting your software developments We will explore how software can be patented, when it makes sense to do so, and how to safeguard your software using alternative protection methods such as tradesecrets and copyright. You’ll learn how to choose the right intellectual property strategy tailored to your business model and software application.	Johannes Wohlmuth & Bram Schoonjans \| Calysta
15:00 - 15:15	Break
15:15 - 16:00	Capturing value by using the appropriate legal strategies for your software developments Get a clear understanding of how to handle legal aspects, whether you develop your own software or use external solutions. We will discuss key legal aspects such as ownership, licensing, compliance and managing open-source components.	Benjamin Docquir \| Osborne Clarke
16:00 - 16:15	Break
16:15 - 17:00	Capturing value by using the tax incentives for software developments Learn how to make the most of tax incentives available in Belgium, from Innovation Income Deduction (IID) to tax credits for R&D investments and payroll tax exemptions. Real examples will help you understand how to apply these measures.	Jeroen Sevens, Laura Dewez, Gaëlle Pirenne \| BDO
17:00 - 18:00	Networking drink