Management of Intellectual Assets by Organisations

Introduction

Intellectual assets, in a broad term of definition is defined as “intangible assets, such as knowledge, know-how, copyrights, patents, brands, trademarks and information, IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) of an organisation”. While the definition of intellectual assets is unsophisticated, a further elaboration on the meaning of “intangible assets” rationalized the importance of this insubstantial but highly important asset in today’s business perspective.

Intangible assets are defined as those non-monetary assets that cannot be seen, touched or physically measured and which are created through time and/or effort. There are two primary forms of intangibles:

1. legal intangibles (such as trade secrets (e.g., customer lists), copyrights, patents, trademarks, and goodwill) and

2. competitive intangibles (such as knowledge activities (know-how, knowledge), collaboration activities, leverage activities, and structural activities).

Legal intangibles generate legal property rights defensible in a court of law. Competitive intangibles, whilst legally non-own able, directly impact effectiveness, productivity, wastage, and opportunity costs within an organization - and therefore costs, revenues, customer service, satisfaction, market value, and share price.

Human capital is the primary source of competitive intangibles for organisations today. Competitive intangibles are the source from which competitive advantage flows, or is destroyed.

To understand the management of intellectual asset relationship of the elements connected with the term intellectual asset need to be understood correctly. The following Diagram; describes the associations between intellectual asset and its others intangible asset “siblings” mentioned above.

Diagram 1 вЂ" Souce ICM Group USA

Diagram 1 can be further explained in a simplified diagram 2 Below below, which shows that intellectual assets is a vital component of Intellectual Capital вЂ" which defined as knowledge that can be exploited for some money-making or other useful purpose. The term combines the idea of the intellect or brain-power with the economic concept of capital, the saving of entitled benefits so that they can be invested in producing more goods and services.

Diagram 2

Intellectual capital can include the skills and knowledge that a company has developed about how to make its goods or services; individual employees or groups of employees whose knowledge is deemed critical to a company's continued success; and its aggregation of documents about processes, customers, research results, and other information that might have value for a competitor that is not common knowledge.

1. NDA - Nondisclosure Agreement

According to Wikipedia’s Glossary of legal terms in computer technology, NDA or Nondisclosure Agreement is defined as “An agreement not to give certain information to others.” NDA (often known outside of the United States as a confidentiality agreement; occasionally called a confidential disclosure agreement or CDA, or secrecy agreement), is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential materials or knowledge the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict from generalized use. In other words, it is a contract through which the parties agree not to disclose information covered by the agreement. An NDA creates a confidential relationship between the parties to protect any type of trade secret. As such, an NDA can protect non-public business information.

NDAs are commonly signed when two companies or individuals are considering doing business and need to understand the processes used in each others business solely for the purpose of evaluating the potential business relationship. NDAs can be "mutual", meaning both parties are restricted in their use of the materials provided, or they can only restrict a single party.

It is also possible for an employee to sign an NDA or NDA-like agreement with a company at the time of hiring; in fact some employment agreements will include a clause restricting "confidential information" in general. Likewise, NDAs are used in the IT field and given directly prior to taking a certification exam. In rare cases, the contract may state that the existence of the NDA itself cannot be disclosed.

2. Patent

Some people confused about patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Although there may be some similarities among these kinds of intellectual property protection, they are different and serve different purposes.

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention. The term patent usually refers to a right granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof. Examples of particular species of patents for inventions include biological patents, business method patents, chemical patents and software patents. Diagram 3 below provides the graphical overview of intellectual property protection symbols.

Diagram 3

A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention. Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date. A patent is, in effect, a limited property right that the government offers to inventors in exchange for their agreement to share the details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned.

In most countries, both natural persons and corporate entities may apply for a patent. The entity or entities then become the owners of the patent when and if it issues. However, it is nearly always required that the inventor or inventors be named and an indication be given on the public record as to how the owner or owners acquired their rights to the invention from the inventor or inventors.

All a patent really does is give the patent-holder the right to stop others from producing, selling or