IPA Relaunches Pitch Protection Scheme for Agencies

The IPA has relaunched its online Pitch Protection Scheme with a reminder to agencies that as one of its recommendations, they should consider registering their pitch materials before presenting them to potential clients.

The IPA Pitch Centre provides agencies with four simple steps to help protect their intellectual property, ideas and concepts presented during the pitch process. This includes entering into a pre-pitch NDA with the potential client and registering any pitch work online with the IPA’s Pitch Protection Scheme. 

Although it does not give any new rights to agencies, the Pitch Protection Scheme will provide them with a certificate of registration that can be used to demonstrate when their materials were registered with the IPA in the event of a future dispute with a potential client.

In addition, new features added to the IPA Pitch Centre this summer will allow agencies:

• to download their certificate and their submitted pitches directly from the website

• to upload larger files and more files

• to see all pitches submitted by their agency


Says Richard Lindsay, director of Legal and Public Affairs, IPA: “Protecting your IP, ideas and concepts when pitching is vital for any agency, and the IPA’s Pitch Centre should be every agency’s first port of call.

“The certificate of registration generated via the Pitch Protection Scheme provides a useful timestamp to document that your agency created the materials, and when they were registered with us and is just one of the safeguards that we recommend for our members on the Pitch Centre.”

In addition to the Pitch Centre, agencies can also access the IPA/ISBA industry-agreed pitch guidelines at The Good Pitch and view The 6 Principles.