Apr 30, 2009
I have been waiting for this sort of collaborative venture. According to a recent article on FindLaw, international law firm, Morrison & Foerster LLP, has entered into a collaboration with Northern California-based Ovidian Group, LLC, an IP asset management firm, to offer the kind of corporate IP management and consulting services that blend both law and business strategy. This has been coming. Clients are now demanding these sort of strategic consulting services that combine intellectual property and corporate management expertise with knowledge ... Read More
Apr 29, 2009
A NYT article broke the news that lawyers for the Justice Department have begun discussions with groups that oppose the book deal that Google struck with publishers and authors to place their books on Google's massive online library. The license agreements, says its opposition, would lend Google the exclusive right to exploit this literature online. According to the article, conversations have begun between the Justice Department and groups such as the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, but the Department has not ... Read More
Apr 28, 2009
For this week's IP Market Player of the Week, I am stepping away from the sector of the IP market focused on managing, exchanging, and/or investing in IP as a tradable asset, and stepping into the sector of the IP market focused on brand creation. While IP Prospective allocates a lot of its attention to the former, which covers patents and an occasional copyright, intellectual property in the shape of a brand name holds just as much or more value in many cases.
The ... Read More
Apr 27, 2009
A New York Times article today (Losses in Good-Will Values Dog Bank Deals) attributes the massive write-downs occurring at banks these days to overvalued good will and the overpayment for companies during the "merger mania" of the last decade. The following part caught my attention:
Companies are taking billions of dollars in losses as they write down the value of assets known as good will - the amount they overpaid for a business compared with the sum of its parts. As the economy ... Read More
Apr 24, 2009
The discussion continues on the IP valuation front. Joff Wild added a reader response to his original "myth buster" post regarding IP valuation myths. The response is written by Nir Kossovsky, executive secretary of the Intangible Asset Finance Society and CEO of Steel City Re. The relevant part reads:
Our current markets are volatile because value is uncertain. International accounting standards suggest that all assets be valued at market. There is considerable push back in the US because the market is damaged and ... Read More
Apr 21, 2009
Oracle jumped on the transaction that IBM could not complete. The reason for IBM's failure to finish the deal sheds light on the anti-trust implications that would have resulted. IBM's large market share in servers overlapped with Oracle's offerings to a point that would have created a monster that HP and Cisco couldn't overcome. Obama's shadow over anti-competitive actions could finally be causing some winds to change . . .
More details on the Oracle/Sun deal, for 7.38 billion, HERE. Read More
Apr 21, 2009
The newest Intellectual Asset Management Magazine (IAM) revisits what is probably the most important, and most troubling, issue pervading the IP market today: Intellectual property valuation. I have visited the topic in a number of posts, and this trend probably won't stop anytime soon. The IAM article is another step in the right direction, authored by Pat Sullivan, who has taken the reigns on the conversation of standard setting in IP valuation.
While I encourage everyone to find this issue of IAM, if not every issue, I understand it ... Read More
Apr 20, 2009
I'm a little late on this one, but in case you missed it:
This documentary film was forwarded to me by my father, a professor/academician/scholar/ and self-pronounced egghead who specializes in the relationships between philosophy, theology, ethics, popular culture and preaching. The film, a product of Open Source Cinema, is called "RiP: A remix Manifesto", and touts itself as
. . . an open source documentary about copyright and remix culture. Created over a period of six years, the film features the collaborative remix work ... Read More
Apr 17, 2009
I have chosen CONSOR as this week's IP Market Player of the Week because CONSOR was chosen this week by Washington Mutual to value WaMu's intellectual property for bankruptcy purposes. Besides IP valuation services, CONSOR provides IP litigation support by way of expert testimony, as well as services pertaining to licensing and other transactions, including M&A and restructuring events.
When it comes to picking apart a mess of a company like WaMu at the Chapter 11 stage and trying to put a value ... Read More
Apr 17, 2009
$325. Thats what it costs to own a brand name. If your business is worth anything at all, and you want people to associate the name of your business with your product, why wouldn't you pay $325 to register the name? Take an hour of your time and do it yourself, or pay a lawyer for an hour or two worth of work to register it in order to insure accuracy and thoroughness, and save yourself the nightmare of having your business ... Read More
Ian McClure is a former corporate & securities and intellectual property law attorney with 
Trevor M. Blum is a former Associate in the Chicago-based, valuation practice group of Ocean Tomo, LLC., an intellectual property (IP) consultancy. Additionally, he provided instrumental research support to Intellectual Property Exchange International, Inc., an IP exchange start-up. Trevor holds a B.S. from Indiana University and is currently an MBA candidate at the University of Cambridge, focusing on international business and finance. His interests also include entrepreneurship, economics, and informational visualization. He enjoys running and cycling in his free time. Trevor seeks to bring a transnational business perspective to the blog. 