IP and Business:Managing IP as a Set of Business Assets

It is generally accepted in the business community that intellectual property (IP) is a set of business assets as well as legal ones. As business assets, however, they have no significant value by themselves. This is a fundamental property of intangibles, such as IP. They become valuable only in the context of the business. That is to say, when their roles in supporting the corporate business strategy are made explicit, and/or when they are processed through the organization's other business assets (such as manufacturing or distribution) to produce a protected product or service that is attractive to customers. In order to be able to manage IP effectively as business assets, it is necessary to under stand what a patent, or trademark, or registered design, actually does for the business.