Abstract
M.Ing.
With the introduction of "International Financial Reporting Standards" (IFRS) through out Europe in April 2001, there is a requirement to accurately report the value of all company assets. This will include by implication all intangible assets and Intellectual Property, such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, and know-how. Items that have not been recorded before are much more visible under IFRS and will need to be carefully interpreted by investors and analysts. In order to meet the future needs of their business, companies will require stringent measures to determine and report the true value of their assets, including intangible assets like patents, trademarks, copyrights, and know-how. Currently there is a lack in methodology which can accurately and reliably determine the value of Intellectual Property for the European business community.
Research is being performed by the Max Planck institute in Munich (home of the European Patent Office) to develop a comprehensive model to uniformly evaluate different types of intangible assets. There are several different quantitative models which are which are being used currently to value patents. The existing methods can not be used to objectively compare patents with one another. It is necessary to build a method that can be applied systematically to different patents in various contexts to achieve symetrical evaluations.
This dissertation project will be focused on building a model to produce a score for European Patents indicative of their statistical survivability. The model will predict which patents will be maintained based on objective criteria that correlate with historical maintenance of previous patents. The model will examine different factors that have a statistically significant correlation to either higher or lower survivability or abandonment rates. Examples of the factors to be considered include: prior art citations, disclosure, claims, prosecutions, forward citing, ownership and others.
This project will produce a model which indicates the statistically survivability of European Patents in terms of a qualitative score which gives an indication of how valuable a patent will be in terms of it's survivability in a legal landscape. This model will then be extended by research currently underway at the Max Planck Institute, to a more comprehensive model that takes additional variables into account, but this is
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outside the scope of this project. The extension of this system is to encompass the technological, financial and business strategic and legal landscapes.
This project contributes towards a system that will help determine the value of a company's Intellectual Property, allowing these intangible assets to be disclosed to shareholders as required by the new International Financial Reporting Standards in Europe.