Rembrandts in the Attic: Understanding Intellectual Property Licensing
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Rembrandts in the Attic: Understanding Intellectual Property Licensing
Rembrandts in the Attic: Understanding Intellectual Property Licensing
1.0 Introduction:In a span of two hundred years, the human race has entered the information age from the industrial age. Today, the majority of a company's assets may be in the form of intangibles. Approximately half the market capitalization of the Fortune 500 companies now is on account of the intangibles that they own. For e.g. Time-Warner has only 6.49% of its value attributable to tangibles; at Oracle Corps' tangibles account for only 4% of its value & unbelievably at GE tangibles account for less than 11% of its value1. The globalization of business, accelerated product life cycles, advances in technology are helping create an environment where the intellectual property component is expanding rapidly and must be strategically managed2. Managing intellectual property (IP) till the very recent past meant defensive protection of a company's intangible assets designed to guarantee rights over the company's IP, to ascertain that there was no dilution of such IP rights and usually to stop others from infringing the IP. Very often IP created by companies was not commercialized or if done, it was at a very small scale. Even the companies that were very innovative looked at IP merely as a means to protect their technology. The philosophy that these IA could be licensed to earn substantial revenue was absent. Xerox, Bell-AT &T were invention generating powerhouses bu...See the full content of this document