IP Culture - a Political Priority?

by Peter Ackerman
CEO and President
Innovation Asset Group, Inc.

I am frequently asked to post to our blog. I’ve liked the excuse that my reflective nature requires more time. My blog blockage is cured with this. Nothing to do with political predilections. President Bush was asked about whether over-the-air broadcasters should pay performance royalties. Turned out to be esoteric from his perspective (“I have like no earthly idea what you’re talking about”). The question was asked by Al McCree, president of Altissimo! Recordings. Just an interesting subsurface alignment between the two that McCree is in the business of recording, licensing and distributing military music. His company licenses music from all of the U.S. Armed Services and their label is found in military academies, on military bases and in war memorials across the United States. It appears that, following a tour in Vietnam in which he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, he was a constituent of Governor Bush in Texas for a time. Not that one would have expected the president to know that.

But that’s not my point. The point I want to make is that I might have preferred a response that even generically referred to the critical need to maintain a national entrepreneurial culture. I would have preferred that a question containing the key words “royalties” and “music exports” triggered the mind into gear about the competitiveness of U.S. innovation and protected creative expression. It’s what savvy political leaders do. This has nothing to do with McCree’s specific issue. And it has nothing to do with political ideology. I asked a Democratic candidate for an Oregon U.S. Senate seat about his thoughts regarding capital availability for emerging U.S. technology companies. His answer was that he felt it was a “state” issue, one for the governor to be concerned about. Great. Oregon to an extent seems to get that as I’m sure other states do. But really it’s a national issue.

It’s simply a matter of priorities and re-jiggering the A-list of mentally-parked talking points. Strikes me that so much falls out of the subject of intellectual asset formation. This is still probably the best country for giving birth to an idea and navigating it to a point of commercialization. And ultimately, an environment that nurtures good ideas is an environment capable of liberating itself from myriad ills and dependencies. But there is much more to be done, as highlighted in a piece last year in U.S. News & World Report.

Sure, I self-servingly want intellectual property issues to be on the front of everyone’s mind. But more broadly, I just want the economic reality and possibilities of a fully supported knowledge economy to be tightly packed in the minds of our political leaders. We’re getting there. eBay and Alan Greenspan among others woke a few people up. But what you read and hear about the most - piracy and patent reform - are symptoms. There’s a lot to think about on the front end of the entrepreneurial value chain. Another post for another day.

It was just a question of the president by someone whose interests would be served by a good answer. Sometimes larger thoughts can be triggered by small things.

Welcome New Contributors

I'm very pleased that several prominent members of the broader community of
interest around intellectual property have agreed to be contributors to this blog. The financial side of IP is such a rich area for discussion, I am certain that you'll find their comments and insights good reading.

These individuals include (in no particular order):

Scott Weingust. Scott is a Director at FTI Consulting and provides technology and intellectual property management services based out of Chicago. He has spent the last 10+ years providing consulting services for many Fortune 500 and smaller companies, and has helped corporations, universities, and other organizations to create, acquire, manage, protect, and extract value from their intellectual property.


Dr. Baruch Lev. Dr. Lev is a Professor and Director of the Vincent C. Ross Institute of Accounting Research and the Philip Bardes Professor of Accounting and Finance at NYU Sterns School of Business. He has been recognized as one of the top 100 Most Influential People in the accounting profession. He is the author of several books including Intangibles: Management, Measurement, and Reporting, Financial Statement Analysis: A New Approach and Accounting and Information Theory.


David McFeeters-Krone. David is President of Intellectual Assets and a technology and licensing consultant. He has a strong background in licensing, gained through 10 years of experience with industry, government, and academic institutions.



Jim Malackowski. He is the President and CEO of Ocean Tomo, LLC, an integrated intellectual capital merchant bank providing valuation, asset and risk management, corporate finance and expert services. Jim is an internationally recognized leader in the field of intellectual capital equity management as well as a noted expert in business valuation and intellectual property strategy.


Dr. Nir Kossovsky. Dr. Kossovsky is CEO of Technology Option Capital, LLC, which provides business solutions at the interface of alternative risk transfer, intangible asset value and finance. He is author of more than 180 technical papers and book chapters, and is the named inventor on 20 pending and issued patents in medical therapeutics, nanotechnology and intellectual property business systems. He is also executive secretary of the Intellectual Asset Finance Society.

Dr. Ednaldo Silva. Dr. Silva currently President of RoyaltyStat LLC which provides transfer pricing consulting services to accountants, attorneys, and corporate clients. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York for over eight years (1982-1990). After academia, Dr. Silva became senior economic advisor at the IRS Office of Chief Counsel and then chief economist at Shearman & Sterling.

Dr. Michael Kayat. Dr. Kayat is President of UTEK Intellectual Capital Consulting. He has more than 20 years of business development success at a senior executive level in a wide range of industries in US and international markets. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Leicester (UK) and an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University. Dr. Kayat is a member of the Intellectual Property Owners Association, the Licensing Executives Society (USA & Canada) and the Association of University Technology Managers.

Our thanks from Innovation Asset to all of these individuals for their participation in this forum. We're looking forward to this blog providing an exciting and stimulating dialog on IP and its financial aspects.