Tuesday 27 January 2009

GFIP 2009

As previously reported on this blog, the two-day Global Forum on Intellectual Property 2009 was held beginning of this month in Singapore.

Organised by the Intellectual Property Academy of Singapore, it covered “traditional” areas of IP (copyright and design, patents etc.) and also more recent fields, such as intellectual asset management and IP valuation. The conference program is available here.

In the panel discussion “Optimal Structures for Intellectual Assets Management in a Multi-National Group”, Dr. Gordon McConnachie (founding chairman of the IA Centre of Scotland) and Audrey Yap (managing partner at Yu Sarn Audrey & Partners), cited Alan Lung, CEO of the Asia Pacific Intellectual Capital Centre, presenting a different view of “intellectual capital” (that is, all of a company’s knowledge, both tacit and explicit, that can be used to create value).

McConnachie and Yap cited Dow Chemical, the chemicals company, as an example of how intellectual asset management can be successfully applied in practice, increasing licensing income and making use of leveraged process know-how and intellectual assets in joint ventures and sales. Dow Corporate Licensing now embodies the management of IP as a component of business strategy across the entire corporation, generating $100 million income per year.

With IP assets increasingly attracting fiscal value, companies also need to get their tax planning right. The panel discussion “Maximising Your Intellectual Assets Revenue: a Tax Perspective” included speakers Pieter de Ridder (partner at Loyens & Loeff) and Abhijit Ghosh (partner at PWC) who gave an insight of how to maximise IP revenue from a tax perspective, looking inter alia into Singapore’s fiscal landscape for R&D and IP management.

If any reader has more information about the IP finance relevant sessions of the Forum, can he or she please share it with us?


1 comment:

Unknown said...

There is no doubt that Dow has been a model of intellectual asset management best practices for the past few years. However, it will be interesting to see whether past performance will continue in the face of the economic downturn and recent layoffs at Dow in the professional management ranks. It is my understanding that Dow (and other similar companies) have recently laid off personal in "non-critical" areas such as intellectual asset management. So, they may have been thought leaders in the past, but without people managing the process currently and in the future, they will not be good for long. In short, if I were looking for companies that will likely emerge from this recession with higher intellectual asset value and competitive advantage resulting from intangible assets, I would look for those companies that did not shed intellectual asset managers from its ranks.