May 2009

We had a really interesting conversation with an accounting practice the other week about our approach to IP and their work on reporting within corporates on intangibles.  This was one of a series of conversations we’ve been having from people who see IP from the outside –> in,  while we here at ipVA are IP professionals seeking the broader IP context, and thus go inside –> out.

In short, this corporate reporting practice has been looking at moves to put IP on the balance sheet from the angle of accountants, while we examine ways to make IP more relevant to the business from the perspective of the legally trained. Each approach takes into consideration the other (we look at ways to move IP assets on to balance sheets and they consider the impact of the different IP rights, for example), but I think it is safe to summarize the approach in this way.

Some thoughts and questions that came out of this conversation:

• Often the view is that if not in the financial statements then not important – both a part of the reason IP gets ignored and a reason to find ways to move it onto the balance sheet.
• In small cap companies, the relationship is often more “personal” and so people will be looking beyond a “I-Capital statement” anyway.
• How do you build confidence (internally and externally) around the forecasts in an I-Capital statement?

Incidentally, through this conversation I was made aware of World ICI (WICI), which with my other hat on, specifically sparked my interest in data.  They are working on, in part, data frameworks for corporate reporting through XBRL frameworks. XBRL stands for eXtensile Business Reporting Language and is way to, put simply, make business reports machine readable so that machines can do all sort of neat stuff with them.

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