Akshat V. Pande, Senior Associate and Head-Intellectual Property Rights of SRGR Law Offices has written a book on “Valuation of Intellectual Property Rights”, which is published by Eastern Law House, Kolkata. The book is priced at Rs. 550 and probably is the first of its kind in India, on concepts and fundamentals related to valuation of intellectual property assets.

This book makes an attempt to set out principles, methods, factors and assumptions required to be considered for the purposes of valuation of intellectual property assets. 

Speaking to Bar & Bench, Akshat said, “I chose to write on the “Valuation of Intellectual Property Rights”, as my area of practice is IP. Coming from a commercial legal background I was interested in IP Valuation and also did my dissertation during my LLM on the same topic and thereafter decided to extend it into a book and publish it in India.”

“The valuation of intellectual property assets is to a large extent determined by the purpose for which the valuation is being done. There can be a number of reasons why a company or owner of a particular intellectual property asset would want to evaluate and put a price tag on it. It is extremely interesting to note that the purpose of valuation actually determines which method or assumptions and factors will apply for valuation. Keeping in mind the importance of the purpose of valuation, this book explains the description of various purposes for which valuation may be done and how it affects the valuation exercise. It further deals with various challenges which are attached to valuation of intellectual property assets. Intellectual property assets or rights have certain characteristics of real property but as they are a creation of law and economics, they are significantly different in many ways from real property. And these different characteristics pose certain specific challenges when it comes to valuation of the intellectual property assets."

He added on to say, “I was always fascinated by this area of how intangibles such as goodwill, IP etc. are valued, as there aren’t many precedents or books available in this area in India. That’s when I started researching and found it was an unexplored area and probably later, I would actually like to develop it as a line of practice of my firm. I completed my book in a span of about one and half years, writing over Christmas holidays, travelling and early mornings and late evenings.”

This book goes on to elucidate the characteristics of intellectual property rights as an asset of a firm and how these assets interact with other fixed / real / conventional asset in a firm environment.

This book attempts to analyse, use and implement the international concepts, precedents and principles regarding valuation of intellectual property assets and attempts to customise them to India specific situations.