In September 8th- 9th, the MOST Management Training Institute organized a training on “Intellectual property management for small and medium-sized enterprises". Participating the event were more than 30 representatives from science and technology organizations, provincial departments of Science and Technology and SMEs in southern provinces,

The seminar aimed to give the knowledge and skills in intellectual property management (IPM) in SMEs and overview of technology transfer and intellectual property transfer. Three main areas of training included: general knowledge of intellectual property management, IP valuation methods and IP infringement loss evaluation; skills in negotiating technology transfer contracts that involve IP assets.

According to Mr. Le Van Kieu, intellectual property is the result of creative activities of human and exists as immaterial. It is a special intangible asset that is protected from unlawful use of other people. IP is expressed through property rights, known as the Intellectual Property Rights.

IP has enormous value for the development of enterprises and it is an important factor to determine the added value of a product or service as well as the value of a business or a country. IP makes up a higher proportion in a company’s value structure as a part of production capital. To protect and develop IP, companies can deploy methods such as raising staff’s awareness on IP related issues, arranging specific staff working on IP issues, developing IP creating human resource and issuing internal rules about IPM.

On IP valuation, Dr. Tran Hau Ngoc explained that there is no single best solution but rather several practices depending on valuation bases. If the valuation is based on cost, the cost approach must be chosen. On the other hand, if valuation is based on market condition, one should chose the market approach, if based on income, the cash flow approach should be chose and if based on time, one should considers the discounted cash flow approach (DCF) in which time value of cash flow is taken into account.

According to Dr. Tran Hau Ngoc, to be able to determine the profit of results of a research and IP asset generated from those results, those results must be valuated to form a basis for usage value, transfer value or capital contribution value… For IP valuation, businesses should refer to the joint Circular No. 39/2014/TTLT-BKHCN-BTC dated 17/12/2014 of the Ministry Science and Technology and the Ministry of Finance, regulating the valuation of results of scientific researches, technological development, intellectual property which were funded by state budget.

The trainers discussed with enterprises and officials from provincial science and technology departments on issues related to IPM, IP asset protection and development and IP valuation in specific cases.