Patent valuation: what’s involved?

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Patent valuation can be done through accounting or adaptable approaches, but the latter is more practical. Patents’ worth is based on their potential use and probability of infringement. Patent valuation is crucial as companies shift to intellectual property-based profit schemes. The limitations of accounting principles include the lack of a clear competitive market or target selling price for most patents. The patterns of use and infringement approach is more accurate in valuing patents, as it considers license fees, legal costs, and patent renewal fees. The Internet and research analysis have made large-scale assessments of industry interest in newly patented ideas more practical.

Patent valuation is generally done using classic accounting practice or a more adaptable approach. The accounting method includes determining the value of a patent based on its estimated market value, cost, and earning potential. This is often largely theoretical, and an approach that is considered more practical is patent pricing based on the potential use of a patent and the probability of patent infringement.

All patents have the potential to be worth an enormous amount of money if the product or process they describe becomes widespread and dominates the market. Furthermore, as many companies in the Western world shift from product and service oriented profit scheme models to those based on intellectual property, it becomes increasingly important to correctly carry out patent valuation in order to protect and develop patents. this property. One of the main problems with patent valuation is the fact that a patent in no way indicates how much time may exist between the development of a successful idea and its implementation in manufacturing and commercialization. A good example of this is the invention of the fax machine, which was patented in 1843 with the first successful model tested by an Italian physicist named Giovanni Caselli in 1865, 22 years later. This was still 11 years before the invention of the telephone itself, as the first fax machine was tested by telegraph, and the fax machine did not become a basic, popular, and essential machine in most office environments. until almost a century and a half later.

Those who use accounting principles in patent valuations are aware of their limitations. The use of market theory is the most problematic, as there is no clear competitive market or target selling price for most patents, and they are often bought and sold to discourage innovation by competitors as quickly as possible. often as they do to encourage it internally. The use of cost theory for patent valuation is based on the fact that the value of an object is determined by the resources that were used to produce it. However, the cost of a patent is a one-time cost, since, once an object or process is patented and that patent is bought by a company, it cannot be patented again by another person, which limits the reflections of the real cost. . The valuation of patent revenue in accounting practices bears the most direct relationship to true value, but is based on the idea that, once owned, immediate work will be done to develop benefits from the use of patents. a patent. However, just as with devices like the fax machine or companies buying up patents to drive competitors out of the market, this too is subject to misconception.

Patterns of use and infringement involve more abstract values ​​that come with intellectual property, such as license fees, legal costs, and patent renewal fees. This approach to patent valuation attempts to view it from a more fundamental aspect of intellectual property and distance itself from the actual levels of commercialization and manufacturing of what is being protected. This may be a more accurate way of valuing patents, as they define increasingly narrow scopes for technological processes and objects that often overlap in the manufacturing sector. Usage patterns can be determined by looking at how often a patent is cited in the literature and databases via online searches, which is a clear indicator of interest in further developing the idea. The advent of the Internet and public documentation, and cutting-edge research analysis as of 2011, have made large-scale assessments of industry interest in newly patented ideas much more practical for patent valuation procedures. than was possible just a few decades ago.

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