Many business owners devote considerable amounts of time and
energy into trying to ascertain a dollar value amount that reflects
their Intellectual Property (IP). One of the biggest obstacles is
mainly attributable to one of IP's greatest strengths: its
intangibility. Unlike the costs of scaling up the production of
goods or even services, fully developed IP can be licensed and
easily shared with others who want to benefit from its
use.
A well-known Rodgers & Hammerstein song lyric asks,
"How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?" In essence,
the management of a company's IP asks executives to do just
that: capture something as ethereal as an idea and apply it to
concrete, value-adding business activities.
