From the Information & Information Technology Foundation: Digital Prosperity: Understanding the Economic Benefits of the Information Technology Revolution (March 2007):

Continue reading Digital Prosperity . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 8:43 AM | Innovation , Internet , Investment

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A group of private equity firms had founded the Private Equity Council to serve as:

a leading advocate for the domestic and international private equity industry as well as a resource for those seeking to better understand the industry’s role in the rapidly evolving global economy. To that end, the Council will launch research, public affairs and government outreach initiatives to explain the multiple contributions private equity makes – to investors, to companies and their employees, to the economic well-being of communities and to public employee pension funds.

It would make little sense to respond to this problem by extending the scope of bad regulations, and thus render private U.S. equity markets as sclerotic as public ones are becoming. That would only send the smart money fleeing again, this time overseas, to London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

posted by James DeLong @ 2:29 PM | Investment

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A month ago, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz argued in a letter to SEC Chairman Chris Cox that corporations should be able to meet their SEC-imposed disclosure requirements by posting information on company-run websites. Interested parties would know to check, or maintain RSS feeds, and the problem of selective dissemination of information that is addressed by Reg FD would be solved.

Last Friday, Cox sent his response. Fittingly, he posted it as a comment on Schwartz's blog. Not so fittingly, but typical of government work, he dodged the issue, and procrastinated. Money quote:

The Commission encourages the use of websites as a source of information to the market and investors, and we welcome your offer to further discuss with us your views in this area. Assuming that the Commission were to embrace your suggestion that the "widespread dissemination" requirement of Regulation FD can be satisfied through web disclosure, among the questions that would need to be addressed is whether there exist effective means to guarantee that a corporation uses its website in ways that assure broad non-exclusionary access, and the extent to which a determination that particular methods are effective in that regard depends on the particular facts.

For decades, the SEC has had a much better press than it deserves; this looks like it is still concerned with ensuring that the playing field between Wall Street pros and investors doesn't get too level. I once asked an ex-NYC securities lawyer where the SEC had been during a period of particularly egregious frauds -- he answered "They were too busy making my life a living hell over every misplaced comma in a prospectus."

And don't even get me started on FASB and accounting rules.

posted by James DeLong @ 11:01 AM | Accounting , Internet , Investment , Markets

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One position on patent trolls holds that they aren’t involved in the market in which they seek to enforce their patents (or perhaps not involved in any market at all). Recently, the Blackberry and eBay courts pondered such a situation while considering irreparable injury to the patent holders. Is the issue specific to patents? Professor Mark Lemley offers a new working paper depicting a loosely related scenario in copyrights.

Should a Licensing Market Require Licensing? MARK A. LEMLEY Stanford Law School July 13, 2006 Stanford Public Law Working Paper No. 917161.

posted by Noel Le @ 3:07 PM | General , Investment , Patents

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A helpful piece from Business Wire on Kauffman eVenturing, a web site "for growth-oriented entrepreneurs," that includes articles on securing IP assets.

posted by Noel Le @ 11:07 AM | Investment

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Free Enterprise Action Fund is "the first mutual fund to seek long-term capital appreciation through investment and advocacy that promote the American system of free enterprise."

I hope that intellectual property is on the Fund's agenda. No single entity can counterbalance the massive resources that universities and foundations devote to supporting the Copyleft (the McArthur Foundation alone has made recent grants of $6.5 million in the category "Intellectual Property and the Public Domain," most of them devoted to undermining the institution of IP), but everything helps.

posted by James DeLong @ 12:07 PM | Investment

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The vagaries of search engine links took me to Creativity and Capital (March 2006), a report of Norden, the Nordic Innovation Center. It has a big focus on IP:

[T]he more promising industries in the Nordic countries are the creative industries. Together with other knowledge-based industries it is also challenged by the persistency of the industrial economy.For society to benefit and prosper from the creative industries we need to enhance the understanding of how to create business and capitalize on cultural inventions. IP, IPRs and contracts are very important tools enabling both business creation and capitalization. Through the use of different IP constructs cultural inventions can for e.g. be licensed, pledged, and even be represented in the balance sheet etc.

The abstract:

Continue reading Creativity & Capital . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 1:59 PM | Investment

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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.

Continue reading "Securitizing Intellectual Property" from The Economist . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 3:39 PM | Accounting , Investment , Markets , Patents

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The Internet and the media are currently agog with the possibilities of delivering increasing volumes of content over cell phones -- movies, TV, music -- and about the investment this will take by the wireless companies.

But the the WSJ (subscription required) yesterday reported on a survey of 1,001 cell phone users that found:

More than three-quarters of the people surveyed said they aren't interested in watching TV programs or movies on a portable device, and 69% said they don't see themselves listening to music on their cellphones. . . . The . . . result echoes that of an online survey last year [that found] that . . . among more than 5,000 adults surveyed, only 1% said a digital-music player was a must-have feature for cellphones. More desirable, they said, would be longer battery life, a built-in camera and high-speed data access.

Clayton Christenson is the management guru who popularized the concept of "distruptive innovation" -- incumbent enterprises often spend their energy adding features to satisfy their best customers, only to lose out to entrants who provide a simpler and cheaper service that is good enough for the many who do not want to pay for all the add-ons.

He may soon have material for another chapter in The Innovator's Dilemma.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:16 AM | Investment

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