Tuesday 26 August 2014

Singapore's IP ValueLab: ambitious, but can it deliver?

Singapore's IP Week @ SG 2014 event is seeking to showcase the city state as a model base for cultivating and developing IP projects.  A media release issued from that event this morning focuses on, among other things, an extremely ambitious project, the IP ValueLab. According to the relevant extract from this release, which summarises a keynote announcement made by Mr K. Shanmugam, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Law:
IP ValueLab

5. Developed as a subsidiary of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), the IP ValueLab will promote and develop IP management and strategy, IP commercialisation and monetisation, and IP valuation in Singapore [these being skills that are not normally found among technically qualified examiners and administrative staff that make up the bulk of most IP offices' labour force -- and for which IPOS will presumably have to compete with the private sector when it comes to recruitment and salaries].

6. For companies and investors, the IP ValueLab will provide them valuation advice to monetise their IP assets [this involves a bit of a shift in focus too: national IP offices are generally preoccupied with the point at which concepts are turned into rights, whereas valuation usually kicks in at a later point in time, where IP rights are protecting products and processes in the marketplace and there is more of a clue as to how the valuation can proceed]. The lab will enable companies to put IP at the core of their business strategy, providing services to help them better understand and tap on IP in their growth and expansion plans.

7. For practitioners and academics, the IP ValueLab will provide a platform for them to collaborate on research and provide thought leadership in IP valuation methodologies [and not before time!] and best practices, with a focus on generating industry-relevant and practicable insights. This will raise the level of confidence and trust in IP transactions, and support and stimulate international transactions. The lab will also deliver training and accreditation to raise competency within the industry.

8. To deliver on its goals, the IP ValueLab will partner the Singapore Accountancy Commission (SAC) to develop and promote IP valuation guidelines, methodologies and best practices, as well as to develop curriculum for the training of IP valuers. SAC will also be represented in the advisory panel of the IP ValueLab, to provide strategic guidance [given that Singapore does not operate in a vacuum but trades with the rest of the world, it will be important to ensure also that its valuation methodologies are transparent and intelligible to businesses and entrepreneurs based in its trading partners; this will no doubt require some marketing and advocacy skills]. ...
How serious is the IPOS about delivering on all of this? Pretty serious, if you take a look at some of the vacancies which it is currently seeking to fill.  IP Finance will keep an eye on how things progress.

IP ValueLab fact-sheet: read it here or download it here

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Excellent news! Now that IPOS has been given the responsibility to sort out how to commercialise and monetise IP hopefully it will come up with solutions. At this point I think patent systems are looking for how best government can engage with them to sort out the problems we have. If IPOS can develop to be a trusted moderator/regulator of the patent system in terms of valuations, settling licensing terms, setting up new financing/commercialisation pathways, it will have done very well.