Via IP Finance's friend and founder-member of the blogging team Eva Lehnert (thanks, Eva!) comes a link to
this piece in the China Daily. The item concerns the Nanhai district government, Foshan, which has signed an agreement with
SIPO, the State Intellectual Property Office, to establish what is described as "China's first State-level demonstration zone for intellectual property financing and investment". The aim is to combine IP with financial capital "to better regulate management of intangible assets and also optimize the IP structure of companies".
The local government apparently already has seven banking partners; Nanhai district has received 29 IP-collateral finance applications this year and, to date, four companies have been granted bank loans totalling 18 million yuan ($2.7 million).
Prima facie this looks like a Chinese invention which we in the West should be able to copy, quite shamelessly and for the greater good of mankind.
