The measure of competitiveness among enterprises will increasingly be driven by an enterprise’s ability to innovate, create and exploit new types of economic assets built from knowledge capital. Intellectual property which is a key by-product of innovation is a critical component of an enterprise’s knowledge capital. A key aspect of innovation management is the legal protection of ideas through intellectual property rights management and legal enforcement.

As a project or contract in-house counsel, I provide strategic IP services to corporations, governments, international organizations, trade bodies, industry associations and other organizations focusing on strategic IP value creation. Enterprises with an exploitable portfolio of intellectual property assets are better positioned for market dominance. In this shift towards the knowledge-based economy, enterprises with a strong portfolio of intellectual assets have a much greater chance of securing profitability. Intellectual asset management is about designing a structured framework at the enterprise level to manage intellectual assets in a manner that enables the enterprise to extract commercial value of its intellectual assets particularly its intellectual property rights. New strategies, tools and techniques have evolved to allow intellectual assets to be exploited optimally for revenue generation and to build shareholder value.

The Strategic Management of IP Assets Program is an intensive program which I run for Microsoft for its Strategic IP Initiative in the Asia-Pacific region. This program provides an intensive management-oriented guide on key aspects of IP asset management, a key practice area that will increasingly impact the business performance of enterprises and nations. Aimed at industry players and policy makers, this program seeks to share insights on the following issues:

• How IP assets can be leveraged as a tool for competitive advantage for enterprises and nations;
• Identification of key economic, legal & business issues in the design, development and management of strategic IP policy at the both the corporate and national levels;
• Introduce key legal concepts in the protection and management of digital IP assets including auditing of government IP assets in e-government projects; and
• Outline key legal & business risk management principles that organizations should adopt as part of their IP asset management policy