Alchemy and IPR – Monetizing Intellectual Property Rights

Abstract

Business houses (intellectual property owners) invest towards R&D activities in order to generate intellectual property (IP) assets. They try to capitalize on the first-mover advantage provided by such assets to recoup their R&D investments, which sometimes may not be sufficient incentive. This insufficient incentive might affect the overall corporate strategy of the IP owners, and de-motivate them from making further investments thereof. In light of this, society coupled with the financial industry empowered with the evolving legal regime and the IPR regime, has come up with various IP monetizing mechanisms, which would help IP owners to augment their revenues and thereby recover their R&D investments. This paper examines: (a) how corporate strategy affects the IP strategy and the synchronization thereof; and (b) the various IP monetizing mechanisms that are becoming popular in recent years.