This paper addresses the question of how to protect the design of products and services from unfair competition and plagiarism, already at the very beginning of the design process. It further discusses how to manage designing effectively. Finally it discusses how to exploit the intellectual assets emerging from the design process.

The future wealth of the industrialised world is largely based on the design and marketing of new products and services. To an increasing extent design is based on the co-operation of numerous companies and experts in technology and content. The variable cost of the production of the product or service has become an increasingly smaller share of its price. Hence the protection of embedded intellectual assets is becoming a critical aspect of all business ventures.

In this paper I propose a technological environment (“Environment” is used in the information technology sense) for design in complex networks of independent companies and experts. An environment intended to make possible the protection of intellectual assets and in which the participants can build trust between each other for common exploitation of assets owned individually and jointly