Latest IAM

The February/March issue of Globe White Page's Intellectual Asset Management has now been published (details here). The cover story is a review of the IP strategy of Dutch electronics giant Philips, and there are articles on the establishment of patent divestiture programmes, the growth of the market for "intellectual property intermediaries" and the patent brokerage activities of Intellectual Ventures. There is also a critique by Thayne Forbes (Intangible Business) of the five years during which the US Statement of Financial Accounting Standards 141 has failed to provide the desired level of information relating to the value of corporate intangible assets.

Accompanying this issue is a 245 page supplement, IP Value 2008: Building and Enforcing Intellectual Property Value that contains an impressively wide range of contributions, many of which have only tangential relevance to IP value.

Death Row catalogue sale progresses despite uncertainties

The New York Post reports that Music Group is offering $25 million to acquire the catalogue of bankrupt rap label Death Row Records. The music major has been named the lead, or "stalking-horse", bidder in Death Row's Los Angeles-based bankruptcy proceedings, according to a 1 February filing in US Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California. Sale of the catalogue, estimated to include 10,000 tracks, has long been held up because prospective buyers are unclear as to which assets the now defunct label still controls. Outstanding claims by rapper Dr Dre over royalty payments relating to his album "The Chronic" are among those which remain outstanding. The bid is contingent on those assets being included in the sale.

Korea pays USD 5 Billion in Patent Royalties

There's an interesting snippet in the Korea Times which reports that the Korean Central Bank has calculated the amount paid in patent royalties over the last year. Apparently there were net outgoings of USD 5 Billion (up around 10% over the previous year). The incoming revenue fell.

The intriguing question is - what does this mean? It could be good new for the Korean economy as Korean industry is selling more products which means that it has to pay higher royalties. It could also mean that innovation in Korea is falling behind.

Cruise.co.uk pays £560,000 for a URL

Travolution reports that Cruise.co.uk has broken the previous British record for the price paid for a domain name by buying its plural version, Cruises.co.uk, for £560,000. The vendor was German travel firm Nees Reisen. The previous UK record stood at £150,000 for the recycle.co.uk name, paid by ASAP Ventures in October 2007. Questions that readers may ask are (i) what Nees Reisen was doing with that URL in the first place and (ii) how the purchaser came to place so high a price on it, considering that it is only a domain name -- and quite a descriptive one too -- and carries no exclusionary right.

Taiwan Patent Auction

OceanTomo started the public auctions - and now everyone is following suit. The latest addition to the patent auction circuit is the Taiwanese Industrial Technology Research Institute who boast a "proven ability to assess a patent's marketability and to assist buyers and sellers in transferring intellectual property".

Submission deadline is 31 March 2008 for the first June auction. So anyone who has missed OceanTomo's latest auction and thinks that their IP might be of some value in Taiwan can have a go at auctioning directly in Taipei

German Standards Institute DIN - General Principles of Proper Patent Valuation

Anyone interested in the work of the German Standards Institute (DIN) on the General Principles of Proper Patent Valuation can download a copy of the publicly available specification here. You will need to register with the Beuth Publishing House - but the specification is free of charge. Search for the reference number PAS 1070 if the document is not displayed directly. On the top right hand corner there is a button for English language text if the text of the website appears in German.

As mentioned on the IPKat website, ISO is currently considering a work proposal to define an international standard on the valuation of patents and has sent out a letter to its member organisations asking for their comments on whether ISO should develop a standard.

Financial firms must recognise the importance of IP

The topic of IP finance may be more mainstream than it at first appears. While flicking through CityAM this morning an article entitled 'UK financial firms must recognise power of patents', written by Robin Fry from Beachcroft caught my eye. It takes a different tack to the IP Finance meeting and calls on financial services to file for patents (and trademarks and to defend their copyright). Robin says 'It is depressing to note that UK financial services firms have not yet reached GCSE standard in terms of understanding why the protection of innovation in their product lines might be relevant to them, let alone what they might do about it.'
If financial services firms can be persuaded to become involved in protecting their own IP, perhaps they will better understand the issues surrounding UNCITRAL and will start to work with IP practitioners!