The June 15th 2006 edition of The Economist has an article on how intangibles such as copyrights, patents, and trademarks are being securitised--that is, companies are issuing bonds based on the value of their IP assets. The trick is valuing the assets:

They are, after all, highly complex and riskier than standard securitisations. The most obvious risk is that the investors cannot be sure that the assets will yield what borrowers promise: technology moves on, fashions change and the demand for sugary snacks may collapse. Valuing intellectual property—an exercise based on forecasting the timing and amount of future cashflows—is more art than science.

IP assets only have value when they actually become the basis of a revenue stream. And most patents are never enforced let alone turned into products. So, one wonders, will the need of investors to determine how to value these assets trickle back to devise some method of sorting the wheat from the chaff? Perhaps it could even trickel back into real solutions for patent reform. Or will it work the other way around, with the problems in the copyright and the patent system holding back this type of investment? My money is on the investors (that's a figure of speech, I don't actually have any money, sigh) figuring out how to evaluate the assets--but not before some investors have lost their shirts.

Either way, it's an argument in favor of the need for rules of the intellectual capital game, be they copyright, patent, or what have you. When the assets are intangible, people will want to trade them, and they'll want a framework of default rules for how those trade work so that not every detail needs to be worked out in the contract.