‘The Intangible Investor’ scrutinizes how to generate the best returns in innovation — Why some significant holders would rather see patents weakened, including their own.

What is innovative? Who owns it? What are the best ways to generate a return on new ideas? These are among the most vexing questions facing businesses today.

The Intangible Investor, by IP CloseUp contributor Bruce Berman, shines a light on the controversies surrounding innovation rights, including patents that protect inventions and copyrights that cover music and books.

It also helps readers to differentiate between patent “trolls,” who rely on the high cost of litigation to secure quick settlements with questionable patents, and legitimate holders that wish to license quality rights for a market price. The motivation of parties who fuel the debate with mud-slinging and half-truths is also scrutinized.

The Intangible Investor – Profiting from Intellectual Property: Companies’ Most Elusive Assets (CloseUp Media, ISBN-13: 978-0615952352) goes to the heart of what constitutes the innovation economy: ideas, performance and utilizing intellectual property rights to generate value.

The book’s website here provides more information, as well as a sample that includes the Introduction and Foreword. 

“Bad Actors?”

Bruce Berman’s fifth book provides businesses, investors and general audiences (1) a basis for understanding how IP can generate hidden value, (2) a foundation for what is meant by patent quality, and who, in fact, are the IP systems’ bad actors, and (3) a context to discern IP developments of the recent past in the hope of providing a clearer vision of the future.

“One of the most remarkable things about this collection is how these 64 essays written have weathered the test of time,” says Gene Quinn, editor of the popular IP Watchdog and a patent attorney who wrote the Foreword

“They are as relevant today as they were when they were written for IAM beginning in 2003, which is a testament to Berman’s forward thinking and understanding of the issues.”

The Intangible Investor is available in print and digital editions for under $20, and can be purchased on Amazon.com here.

Image source: CloseUp Media