Intellectual property (IP) is widely recognized to be a critical issue for implementing open innovation and collaborative research in new product development (NPD). Several intellectual property protection mechanisms (IPPMs) can be employed by companies to protect their critical technology and know‐how (patents, designs, trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights). However, how they should be used in the different phases of collaborative NPD processes is still debatable, and few empirical studies regarding the issue are available at the moment. This paper, which is based upon the case of an Italian NPD service company named MR&D, focuses on one main question: how can companies protect ideas, technology, and know‐how in collaborations concerning different phases of the NPD process? It proposes an initial tentative framework to answer this question by way of an analysis of pertaining literature and a case study.