Edison lightbulbs hanging with question marks on them and the text "Have questions? We have answers. Frequently asked questions"

F.A.Q.

We’ve compiled a list of frequently asked questions to give you more information about the IP Strategy Academy.   

General

We’ve worked with innovative companies to help build and optimize their IP for over 10 years as IP experts at Stratford Intellectual Property and we understand the value a well-managed portfolio provides to an organization. Intellectual Property strategy can be an intimidating undertaking, so we created the IP Strategy Academy to help encourage and empower SME C-levels and employees to take an active role in their IP management. 

Our goal with the Academy is to increase IP literacy and provide users with the information they need to be confident in the decisions they make regarding their IP assets.  

We’ve done our best to make sure that the information we include in our videos is generally applicable to organizations with portfolios of all sizes, but we’ve found that typically small and medium sized enterprises make up the majority of our users. 

IP rules and regulations vary across different jurisdictions. Unless otherwise specified, our content has been created to provide information based on the Canadian and United States regulations and processes.

We are consistently adding new content to our Premium offerings. Generally, you can expect us to release new videos twice a year.

We are always looking for relevant IP content that might benefit our users. We add resources to the Foundations library any time we find something that we think might be interesting or useful.

Of course! If there is a topic that you would like to see covered or a case study you would like us to explore, we encourage you to get in contact with us.

You can read our full privacy policy here. 

If you no longer wish to have access to our Foundations or Premium content and would like your account information deleted, please reach out to us. 

You can read our full Terms of Service here.

Premium Membership

Our Foundations membership is a free account that provides users access to our Library, Tool Kit and the Foundations Course. We like to think of the content we’ve selected for our Foundations videos as the building blocks of IP Literacy and Strategy. You’ll find 15 introductory courses covering trademarks, patents, trade secrets and other IP basics. It’s great for someone just beginning their journey into the world of IP.

Our Premium membership is a paid account that provides users access to everything included in the Foundations membership as well as additional course content available under our Lessons offering. Our current Premium library has videos spread across 6 courses that delve deeper into the strategies, best practices and general knowledge of each topic. We’ve also included links to additional resources that relate to specific lesson topics (like blog posts and podcasts). We are constantly adding new content to our Premium courses and currently have a schedule of over 75 videos that are currently in development.

Premium memberships do not expire. Once you have purchased a Premium account, you will always have access to premium content.

Premium memberships that were purchased as part of an organization plan or are part of a VIP engagement with Stratford belong to the organization rather than the individual and may be deactivated at the request of the organization.

Individual accounts are non-transferable.

We want to ensure that you are 100% happy with our Premium Courses. If, for whatever reason, you feel that the content available with a Premium account is not what you expected, please let us know.  We do have a 30 day refund policy but would love to chat with you to see if we can do anything better.

  • If you have technical or payment queries, do not hesitate to contact us. 
  • If after you attempted to resolve issues with us and still feel that the Premium courses you purchased do not best fit your requirements, we want to make things right. 
  • Only Premium accounts for which less than 50% of the content has been viewed are eligible for our 30 day refund policy.
  • VIPM clients who used a VIPM code to purchase are not eligible for refunds. 
  • Refunds will not be issued should an enrolled employee leave the company after the 30 day refund period. We will happily transfer the premium account to another eligible employee. 

Our policy offers a full refund within 30 days of your date of Premium enrolment. We’d love to know what went wrong and how we can improve, so please include details about the reason for your refund request when you reach out to us. 

Once your refund request has been submitted and approved, Stratford will make every attempt to process the refund as quickly as possible. Your financial institution can take up to 20 days for the refund to reflect in your bank account/card.  

A unique company code is created for every Stratford VIP client to grant them free access to the Premium content as part of their VIP engagement. 

You will need to create an individual account using your company email address and add the Premium membership to your cart. On the checkout page enter your VIP access code in coupon box and hit “Apply coupon” which will bring your cart total to 0. You will need to complete the purchase process to activate your Premium membership.

Your organization’s VIP Account Manager will have provided this code to their IP Lead within your organization.

Credit card and payment is collected through a secure third party and not viewed or stored by Stratford Group Ltd.

You can view our full privacy policy here.

Troubleshooting

If you have forgotten your password, there is an option to reset it on the login page by clicking on the “Forgot your password?” link below the Login button. You will receive instructions to the email address associated to your account on how to reset your password.

If you have forgotten or no longer have access to the email address on file, please contact us.

There may be 2 reasons why you cannot access some of the content on our website:

  1. Content identified as premium is only available to our Premium users. If you are a Foundations user, you must purchase a Premium account to view this content. If you are a Premium user, you must enrol in each course to view the content. To do so, click on the course you wish to view and select “Get enrolled” and follow instructions. Once you are enrolled, the content will be unlocked. There is no additional charge to get enrolled for Premium members.
  2. Some of our premium videos have not been released yet but will still appear in the course menu. If you click on one of these videos, the content will not appear, instead the date this content will be available is listed.

Occasionally some features or tools will be unaccessible due to necessary maintenance being performed on our site or because we are making improvements to the offerings. Rest assured that we are working as quickly as possible and will always try to let you know in advance of any extended outages.

It may be that the code you are using is expired or has reached its maximum number of redemptions. Our access codes are not case sensitive and do not include any spaces. If you are getting an error code when attempting to use one, please let us know. 

VIP Clients: Access codes for our VIP clients are restricted to company email addresses, please be sure that you are not using a personal email to create an account.

About Stratford Intellectual Property

Stratford Intellectual Property is a division of Stratford Group Ltd. Headquartered in Ottawa, we work with amazing people and organizations throughout Canada and the US. Whether we’re delivering you value virtually or onsite, we’re committed to helping you realize your goals.

Our team is made up of industry experts with experience in all aspects of IP Strategy and the IP lifecycle so you can trust the content we are delivering. 

Yes!

With experience across a wide breadth of industries, our team can step in as an advisor, or lean in to help you with a specific need (i.e. drafting a patent application). You can find out more about Stratford Intellectual Property here.

Stratford Intellectual Property is a full service patent agency and consultancy focused on providing innovators like you with strategic and hands-on intellectual property support that’s in line with your business objectives. Our services range from designing and executing a custom IP strategy to  managing IP portfolios, to landscape searches and more for all major forms of IP protection – including patents, trade secrets, trademarks, design patents and copyrights. Our team of IP strategy experts includes certified patent agents and strategic advisors experienced in every aspect of the IP lifecycle. We lean in to foster a culture of innovation in your organization and optimize your IP portfolio to reduce risk and increase ROI. Visit our website for more information.

As a division of Stratford Group Ltd. we can also help you connect with industry experts relating to a number of different business goals or concerns in areas such as Human Resources, Management Consulting, Leadership Development and more! For more information about Stratford Group and their service offerings, click here.

We’ve done our best to anticipate any questions you may have about the Stratford IP Strategy Academy but if there is something we’ve missed or if we haven’t answered your question or concern in our F.A.Q. please feel free to reach out to us directly. Similarly, if you have a suggestion, comment or something that you think we should know about, we’d love to hear from you.