Rembrandts in the Attic: Understanding Intellectual Property Licensing

1.0 Introduction:

In a span of two hundred years, the human race has entered the information age from the industrial age. Today, the majority of a company’s assets may be in the form of intangibles. Approximately half the market capitalization of the Fortune 500 companies now is on account of the intangibles that they own. For e.g. Time-Warner has only 6.49% of its value attributable to tangibles; at Oracle Corps’ tangibles account for only 4% of its value & unbelievably at GE tangibles account for less than 11% of its value¹. The globalization of business, accelerated product life cycles, advances in technology are helping create an environment where the intellectual property component is expanding rapidly and must be strategically managed².