Update : 04/01/2021

Happy New Year to you all!  Last year was challenging for many but even with the declaration of a state of emergency, all employees at our office continue to carry out their work remotely without any issues.

According to the Prime Minister’s Office website, a second web conference on IP Promotion Plan 2021 was held by the Concept Committee of the IP Strategy Headquarters on December 21,2020. In one of the documents, there was a mention of IP value assessment as a mechanism to promote IP investment and utilization.

The IP Strategy Promotion Office conducted various studies, such as the Report of the Task Force on Business Value of Intellectual Property (IP Office, 2018) from the Brand Value Valuation Study Group (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2002) as part of the study of IP valuation methods, and the Management Design Sheet (IP Office, 2018) from Intellectual Asset Management (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2005) as part of the study of the visualization of intangible assets.

Intangible assets (especially intellectual property) account for an increasing percentage of corporate value, and while the source of corporate value is shifting from tangible to intangible assets, intangible assets are not sufficiently valued, utilized, or acquired in Japan, and the weight of investment in tangible assets is still high. In addition, the ratio of R&D expenditures to sales of large Japanese companies such as Toyota and Sony are smaller than those of GAFA companies such as Google and Apple.

In order to strengthen Japan’s industrial competitiveness, efforts related to intellectual property and finance have been made to encourage the creation of innovation by increasing investment in intangible assets and R &D by encouraging the acquisition of funds based on intangible assets. As a result, JPO started IP Finance Promotion Project, an initiative which includes the IP Business Valuation Report, which has been conducted for the past five years, and the IP Business Proposal Report, which started last year. Private financial institutions, such as banks, have also set up various systems to make it easier to provide loans to small and medium-sized enterprises based on both intangible and tangible assets. This is currently a growing trend throughout the country to promote investment and utilization of intellectual property.

We at AIVAS believe that this trend is not limited to R&D-oriented companies and financial institutions. Over the past few years, we have seen firsthand that M&A intermediaries, companies involved in M&A, and companies that own patents and other intellectual property (e.g., trademarks and copyrights) are becoming more interested in the appropriate valuation of intangible assets for IP investment and utilization. We hope that we can be of help to our clients in determining the true value of their IP assets.