By Mindvault Sdn Bhd
When an organization knows which intellectual property rights to protect, when to protect them and in which forms, it may well find another viable channel to profitability.
A far cry from the narrow view of protecting an author’s or creator’s claims of ownership towards their work, developments in the field have transformed IP into a valuable commercial monopoly for organizations.
How to assess and exploit value from IP for profit was the focus of a recent seminar conducted by David Oh of Mindvault Sdn Bhd, Malaysia’s current leading intellectual property consultants, jointly organized with the Technopreneur Development Flagship division of the Multimedia Development Corporation Sdn Bhd.
With over 20 software and technology companies present it was clear that the protection of IP rights has consolidated into the proper management of intellectual assets, or intellectual asset management (IAM), fast becoming an area that can no longer be ignored.
“Intellectual asset management involves the integration of business, legal and technological expertise to leverage an organisation’s intellectual assets to increase profitability and maintain competitive advantage,” said Oh.
“The measures taken to protect IP rights must be commensurate with its commercial value,” continued Oh while illustrating the IAM life cycle that enables an organisation to continually identify, assess and exploit their IP assets for profitability.
Sharon Haron, Finance Manager for Devcorp Technologies that develops Java games said that “the seminar was very interesting. I never knew that IP extends to other areas and that there were so many layers that you have to protect.”
“We are often confused by all the terminology in IP and this seminar session clarified a lot of issues. They were well-explained and expressed, the examples given were very pertinent,” said K Kuppusamy, vice-president of Pentasoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd.
Another participant, Agnes Ngiow, assistant accountant for IFCA MSC Berhad, a member of the IFCA consulting group, said the seminar title “Profiting from Intellectual Property” attracted her to participate.
“The seminar was very useful. It is quite a new topic, and I was interested to find out how to profit from IP,” said Ngiow, adding that IFCA MSC keen to know about the developments in software patenting.
Another seminar will be held again in August for TDF/MSC companies and forms part of Mindvault’s ongoing nation-building and community service to educate the ICT industry on how to leverage on their IP rights.
The seminars are also in line with TDF’s objectives, and are extended to their companies and technopreneurs as part of TDF’s enrichment programme.
“We feel that it is important for our companies and some of them have also voiced their need for it,” said Felix Kuek, Head of Lead Generation of the TDF programme/division at MDC.