How important is intellectual property to a company’s balance sheet? Just ask Samsung. The company’s shares plummeted nearly 7.5 percent after it lost a patent infringement case to Apple in late August 2012. The ruling erased more than $12 billion dollars from Samsung’s market value overnight.

The ever-growing importance of innovation for economic growth has changed the role of Intellectual Property (IP) rights, especially patents, in business. They are no longer seen as merely a means of protecting an innovation, but also as marketable assets that can be acquired, held, licensed and sold strategically—either to attack competing businesses within a market, or to defend one’s own business from such attacks.

At first sight, the distinction between trademarks and certification marks seems clear enough. Trade marks are a badge of origin, whereas certification marks indicate that products or services have been certified as having a particular characteristic.

It is widely accepted that innovation is a critical part of the national economic recovery strategy and Democrats and Republicans alike are relying on the nation’s research universities to drive the strategy home.

Valuation analysts are often called on to analyze intellectual property for such purposes as: sale or license structuring, transaction fairness opinions, financial reporting and fair value accounting, federal income tax, ad valorem property tax, financing collateral, bankruptcy and reorganization, and litigation support and dispute resolution (including breach of contract, infringement, and other tort claims). For purposes of this discussion, intellectual property includes patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.

This paper considers some of the problems associated with patent enforcement in Australia and proposes an approach to patent litigation which is directed at alleviating some of the difficulties which have been identified. Specifically, it proposes a strategy designed to identify the parties’ risks at an early stage of patent litigation proceeding and facilitate an early resolution of the dispute.

Collaborative research has taken its place as a mainstream innovation process. Its purpose is to access external sources of technology (or other assets) and integrate them into the firm’s products and services.

When it becomes necessary to estimate and account for the value of a certain type of asset on a recurring basis, standard approaches, terminology, and conceptual models tend to emerge. The use of such standards enables greater consistency of approach, comparability of results, and efficiency in practice.

In the world of licensing, the cost of capital is supposed to reflect the risk—as well as opportunity cost and erosion of value due to inflation—of receiving anticipated royalty revenues over time. If a licensing agreement encapsulates the collection of revenue from multiple sources—each of which represents a varying degree of risk—why should our models only include one number for the cost of capital?

Plain packaging refers to laws or regulations requiring that cigarettes be sold in standardized packs (also referred to as “generic packaging”) without any stylized trademarks, logos, colors. In lieu of branding information, the packs would be dominated by large health warnings and other legally mandatory information and tax-paid stamps with only a small space reserved for the brand name in a plain uniform typeface. As a result, each cigarette pack would appear exactly the same as every other pack that is legally sold in the market.

Article III of the U.S. Constitution requires an actual “case” or “controversy” before the judicial branch has authority to adjudicate a legal dispute. This requirement applies at all stages of litigation, and an ongoing dispute can become moot when there is no longer a live case or controversy. It is well settled, however, that a defendant cannot moot a case simply by ceasing its unlawful conduct once sued, leaving open the possibility that the defendant will resume its wrongful conduct after the case has been declared moot.