Qualitative assessment
A prerequisite for monetary valuation of patents is a substantive content based assessment in which the quality of a patent and the relevance to a particular topic (product, technology, etc.) is determined. For this purpose, the patents must be read and the content must be analyzed. In case of large numbers of to-be-valued patents, the use of appropriate patent software can significantly save time and effort.
Such software can intelligently classify patents according to the invention content and pass them to the right specialists for final evaluation. Further, the software can generate quality indicators for patents (for example, citation analysis) to support the evaluation process.
The result of a qualitative assessment describes the quality of claims and their relevance for specific applications.
Monetary valuation
Technical IPRs or trademarks can be analyzed in terms of the monetary value through different methods. Valuations are required by financing partners, such as banks or investors or in the context of credit-worthiness checks. They are also used to determine purchase and licensing prices in in IPR transactions or to obtain a value overview of intellectual property - for example, in case of acquisitions, or joint ventures. Also, research and development achievements can thereby be monetarily valued.
In most cases, the accepted method being used is the "risk-adjusted license analogy" because it has been proven in practice and can be appropriately adjusted to the various requirements.
The result of a monetary valuation is a value or a range of values dependent on the valuation methodology and valuation criteria.
It is important that there is no objective value of an IPR. The selected evaluation criteria and the used methodology are always based on an individual valuation scenario.
For example, in the context of selling or acquiring a company the evaluation of the existing intellectual property portfolios is without doubt of high importance. Of course, PCT applications and EP patents are always part of a comprehensive examination of their respective values. But who rates or estimates the costs that may be incurred even before the innovation finally is protected by a granted national IPR? Such forthcoming investment costs can become a significant value-influencing factor. Highly automated, transparent and flexible manageable systems provide support for better transparency.
Strategic Valuation
A strategic valuation of IPRs is usually a special form of qualitative assessment. The result of a strategic review describes the strategic relevance of an IPR in relation to the overall business strategy and associates the strategic relevance with the legal strength of the IPR. Thereby, weaker individual IPRs can still form strategically relevant clusters.