Thanks Jill, A couple of snip From the article that are directly related to QCOM, which as of the sale HS Div. to K is nearly all Knowledge based or IP based.
snip
<<There's another downside of knowledge assets: Property rights are fuzzy. When it comes to a tangible asset, such as an airplane, American Airlines doesn't have much to worry about. No one is going to steal an airplane. But American Airlines definitely has to worry about someone stealing its software. The proliferation of thousands upon thousands of very costly patent-infringement lawsuits attests to the difficulty of defining and keeping property rights when you're dealing with knowledge.
And while the benefits that come with knowledge assets can be enormous, they are much more uncertain than the benefits of tangible assets. When you invest in a tangible asset, such as an office building, you always get some kind of return -- even during a recession. And when boom times come, your property really pays off. But when you're building a knowledge asset, you could quite possibly end up with nothing.
>>
That last statement is a too strong IMHO but the theme applies.
snip<<Let me give you an example. Some people use patents as an important knowledge attribute, but to me the number of patents that a company has is not very meaningful at all. You can get patents on almost anything, so simply having a large number of patents is absolutely meaningless. But there are ways to measure the attributes of the patents that have real significance. For instance, one powerful measure of the real value of a patent is how many times subsequent patents refer to it. If you have good science, then people will refer to you a lot, and you'll contribute a lot. >>
Food for thought for the old timers who mention patents all the time. I would like to know the number I made bold above.
Greg |
