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29 April 2003
The following is an excerpt of an article that appeared in
the Financial Times “Special Report on Intellectual Property”.
The article quotes Stephen Potter, QED’s European Managing
Director, and stresses the importance and value of companies taking
a pro-active attitude towards the management and commercialisation
of their IP assets.
How to make your intangible assets sweat
"It’s not on the balance sheet, the person in charge
of it is probably not on the board and protecting it might even
be considered an unnecessary cost. It does seem a strange way to
treat one of the most valuable corporate assets.
Intellectual Property has long been a slightly uncomfortable issue
for company executives. They know they have something unique, they
know their creations are valuable, but they do not really know how
to make best use of IP.
That situation is improving rapidly as some of the most forward
thinking corporations come up with highly imaginative ways of cashing
in on their innovations. But many more are missing out.
There is certainly plenty of IP being generated – industry
spends more than $500bn a year on research and development while
the market for licensing out patents is estimated at $170bn a year.
The products generated by such R&D are easily identified but,
in order to produce them, there is also a huge amount of know-how,
ideas, brands and experience that are just not being made to sweat
in the same way as more tangible assets…
“Investors are increasingly recognising the value of companies
IP assets, says Stephen Potter, European managing director at QED,
the global IP (licensing and) consulting business. In 1975, 25 per
cent of the stock market valuation of companies on the FT ALL Share
or Fortune 500 indices lay in the intangible assets. By 2002 this
had risen to more than 70 per cent.” …”
Financial
Times “Special Report on Intellectual Property” –
Wednesday 29th April 2003
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