Abstract: The article is dedicated to considering the essence and purpose of a company’s intellectual property audit in context of strategic decisions making. Audit can be helpful not only in legal and accounting issues, but in the searching of directions of business development, new markets and possibilities. Types of audit according to its goals are described in the article: general purpose IP audit, event‐driven IP audit and limited purpose focused IP audit. Tools of audit and its methods are given. Two main approaches of audit conducting — top-down and bottom-down are cited. The information in different spheres of a company’s activity — management, accounting, marketing, R&D, production, sales — that is necessary for audit of intellectual property, and methods of its obtaining are defined. To provide effective IP audit the directions of research are defined. These directions are: identification of company’s IP objects, their status, owners, how company uses its assets and how they are protected.

Important issue is if there are some infringements of intellectual property rights of company or if company infringes rights of third parties. Audit of intellectual property helps to review the system of intellectual property management of a company and identify directions of its improvement. In some cases IP Audit provides evaluation of IP assets. Using SWOT-analysis is quite common for IP Audit, it helps find out strengths and weaknesses in a company’s management of intellectual property and based on them and opportunity and treats forms directions of better exploitation of intellectual property. The result of IP Audit is Audit report as a type of instruction for company’s review and revaluation of its intellectual property and development of strategy of intellectual property management. Report contains some recommendations about further exploitation of IP assets and helps company to find new market possibilities, business opportunities according to its intellectual property.