External sparring partner for engineering teams
Your engineering teams have the ideas.
I help you spot
which ones are worth protecting.
An IP right can secure what your company has engineered — and make clear what belongs to it.
I have spent more than fifteen years in engineering, from advanced development through to production. At the same time, I have been personally involved for many years in turning technical developments into national and international IP rights. Those are the two perspectives I bring into your engineering department.
01 — The starting point
Inventions often hide in the details
Technical solutions come out of everyday work: a part becomes more robust, a control system works more precisely, a process does something it could not do before.
To the team, that is simply a problem solved. Whether there is an invention in it worth protecting is usually something only an outside eye will spot.
It gets lost in the day-to-day
Spotting inventions belongs inside the development work while it is still running, not at the end of it. Ask only once the task is closed and you are asking too late: the team has moved on, and the solution may already have left the building.
So that nothing worth protecting disappears along the way, this needs a fixed place in how you work — set points in the running project, clear responsibilities, and the right questions to ask. Without one, what ought to be protected never gets examined.
That is where I can help: an experienced outside eye on technology your team already knows inside out.
Later is often too late
In a partnership, a funding round or a company valuation, the question comes up quickly: what does the company actually own, technically? That is when a portfolio of IP rights proves its worth.
And once a solution has been published, offered or shown, the decision you did not take earlier can often no longer be taken at all.
Protection starts with noticing
An IP right does not start with the filing. It starts with someone noticing: in the engineering department, with an eye for what makes a technical solution different.
Unrecognised inventions remain unprotected.
That is exactly where I come in: with engineering experience of my own, a practised inventor's eye, and a way of working that does not leave the noticing to chance.
02 — How I work
I work with your engineers on the technology already in front of them
No method for your team to learn first. No creative exercise with made-up problems. We take the technical topics already on your table and look at them for possible inventions and IP rights.
Find what is worth protecting
A handful of engineers, one specific technical topic. We work through the solution together, and through how it came about. I ask the questions that day-to-day development often leaves no time, no distance and no experience for.
Look harder at the interfaces
What is worth protecting is frequently not in a single part at all, but in between: between one function and another, between software and mechanics, between a sensor and what it enables. Solutions arise at exactly these crossing points, and they are easy to miss, because no single discipline claims them entirely as its own.
Build it into the way you work
So that inventions do not only get noticed while I am in the room, we agree on when to look, who is responsible, and how things are written down. That way you regularly review which technical solutions deserve a closer look before they leave the company.
Confidentiality is a precondition, not an extra
Unpublished inventions have been part of my working day for more than fifteen years — I know what is at stake when a solution becomes visible too early.
I sign a confidentiality agreement before the first meeting where we go into detail, not after it.
03 — Where I draw the line
What I do not do
This section comes early on purpose. If you are after something else, better to find that out now than later. It saves us both time.
I work where inventions take shape technically, not where they are turned into law. I give no legal advice, I draft no patent applications, and I represent no one before a patent office.
Novelty searches, freedom-to-operate analyses and judgements on whether something is protectable are not part of what I offer. Not as a sideline either.
I help you see what makes a solution technically distinctive. Whether it is protectable in law is for the patent attorney to say.
I do not arrive with a method your team has to learn first. I arrive with experience from having done the engineering and the inventing myself.
No made-up problems. No exercises borrowed from other industries. No promised number of results. We work on your actual technology.
04 — How it is set up
One way in, many formats
There is no off-the-shelf package here. There is a way of working that bends to fit your situation. Which format makes sense is what the first conversation is for.
From ninety minutes to a year
A talk for your engineering team. A day on one specific topic. A block of several days across several topics. Or a year alongside you, with the dates in the diary.
One-off, recurring or ongoing
Some companies need one good push and carry on by themselves from there. Others want a regular outside look at their technical topics and their processes. And some want one person they can call on over a longer stretch.
On site when it counts
A lot can be prepared and followed up remotely. Where being in the same room gets us further, I come to you — for a focused workshop, say, or a block of work over several days.
How we arrive at the right fit
First a short conversation, to work out whether I can contribute anything to your situation at all. If it fits, you get a concrete proposal covering content, scope and how it would run.
So there is no catalogue to click through here. What you get instead is a clear way into work that fits the problem you actually have.
05 — About me
Dr.-Ing. Daniel Münning
Mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen University. Doctorate at the Institute of Internal Combustion Engines, Technische Universität Braunschweig.
More than fifteen years in vehicle development at an automotive manufacturer — advanced development and concept work, then international project leadership, then responsibility at the production stage. Alongside that, supervising student projects, theses and doctoral work.
Active as an inventor myself throughout: named on more than 400 national, European and international patent publications.
Annual guest lecture at HAW Hamburg since 2022.
What I learned in vehicle development does not depend on the vehicle. It comes from working in a place where many disciplines meet on one product under time and cost pressure — and from the habit of watching, all the way through, for what is worth protecting. The eye for what makes a technical solution special is the same, whatever it is you are building.
06
When a conversation is worth having
- You want IP rights to become strategic — something you aim at over the next few years, not something that happens by accident
- You know it matters, but nobody in the building knows where to start
- Your engineers are good, but nobody asks them systematically what is worth protecting
- You already file applications, and you are not sure the right inventions are among them
- A funding round or a sale is coming, and what you hold is suddenly a question
- You want someone from outside who will disagree with you — not someone who will agree
- You are looking for someone to draft the application
- You need a search or a legal opinion
- You expect a set number of inventions to come out of it
- You cannot free up three or four engineers for a day — without the people who build the technology, none of this works
- IP rights are not on the list this year. Then it is the timing that is wrong, not the topic
- You work in the automotive industry or its supply chain
07
Then get in touch
If you think a conversation would be worth it, write to me.
Please, no confidential details before a confidentiality agreement is signed.