IP valuation for Investment Purposes
By Roya Ghafele, OxFirst Ltd. www.oxfirst.com
With the European Central Bank’s interest rate decision continuing to be at low interest rates, investors are forced to put their funds to work in different ways. Can patents, the underlying rights to an invention, offer such an alternative?
Any type of investment decision is hinged on an adequate appraisal of risk and return rates of an investment. Ideally, an investment yields high returns, while risk rates are kept as low as possible. The investment in intellectual property forms no exception to that.
The adequate valuation of intellectual property can hence play an important role in the promotion of technology markets. It is through this instrument that investors can make an educated placement of their funds. In spite of the instrumental role that IP valuation could assume, it is often ignored in the financial community.
The problem does not seem to be that it is not possible to value IP for investment purposes or that IP has any intrinsic features that would prevent its valuation. The problem is a lack of awareness of the many opportunities provided by IP valuation. If investors have IP on their radar screen at all, then they tend to contend themselves with counting patents (apparently, the more, the better seems to be the premise) or to check if the company is involved in any legal proceedings. As to early stage technology companies, investors will at best consult a patent attorney who can undertake a freedom to operate analysis of the underlying patents of a technology. While such an assessment can provide helpful legal insights, it does not allow to understand how IP relates to potential business performance.
IP managers in technology companies on the other hand side do often also not know how to best communicate the value of patents to financial analysts, angel, VC or Private Equity Investors. Current accounting standards that allow to only partially reflect the value of patents do not make things easier.[1] This leads to market inefficiencies, where valuable technology sits gathering dust, while investors are not able to scope potentially attractive financial opportunities. Already in 2014, the European Commission called for an enhanced usage of IP valuation as a means to better link those in search for funding with those eager to put their money to work.[2] Equally, the UK Intellectual Property Office launched an initiative inviting the City of London to ‘Bank on Intellectual Property.’ [3] Those initiatives have so far shown little results and the best practice for leveraging IP in financial transactions still seems to stem out of Silicon Valley, where some financial institutions have been reported to use IP valuation for investment purposes. [4] Yet, institutions like these are the worthy exception, rather than the norm.
So, with a lot to gain from overcoming the little understanding that prevails on IP valuation, the question arises what technology entrepreneurs can do to attract investors to their business.
[1] GHAFELE, R. ‘Accounting for Intellectual Property?’ Oxford Journal on Intellectual Property Law & Practice, Nr. 5/7 2010, at 37 [2] EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Report of the Export Group on Intellectual Property Valuation. http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/Expert_Group_Report_on_Intellectual_Property_Valuation_IP_web_2.pdf (2014) at 7, 22-23, 57, 91, [3] UKIPO ‘Banking on Intellectual Property? The role of intellectual property and intangible assets in facilitating business finance’ available at: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipresearch-bankingip.pdf (2014) at 221 [4] See About Silicon Valley Bank, http://www.svb.com/about-silicon-valley-bank/ (disclosing that Silicon Valley Bank’s clients include 50% “of all venture capital-backed tech and life science companies in the US” and that Silicon Valley Bank was established in 1983).