In an economy where intangibles increasingly drive economic growth, reporting to shareholders, lenders, and the market more generally on substantial intellectual property (IP) assets, IP management, and IP strategies has become an expectation for any company—whether young or established. Consequently, IP reporting is increasingly impacting the practice of IP professionals across all industries and can constitute a competitive advantage for businesses and their IP departments.

However, IP reporting goes way beyond IP inventory and legal management and extends into matters including asset valuation and accounting procedures, among many others, and necessitates cooperation across departments, alignment on objectives, and the design and implementation of internal processes to support IP reporting through time.

INTA President Zeeger Vink (MF Brands Group, Switzerland) convened a Presidential Task Force on IP Reporting for Brands at the start of the year, which is preparing a report on the topic due for publication in early 2023. Mr. Vink is the guest of this month’s episode of INTA’s podcast, Brand & New. During this conversation, he explains why this is such an important issue for the global IP community, offers some advice for in-house IP practitioners looking to engage in this matter in their companies, and shares insight into what INTA is doing to address the matter.

Below is an excerpt from Mr. Vink’s Brand & New podcast interview. It includes some minor edits to improve readability.

Your Presidential Task Force has been researching IP reporting in depth. Please walk us through the reasons why this topic gained your attention and what are the objectives of this workflow for you and also for the INTA members?
The underlying idea that I had for quite some time is that there is not enough IP awareness within companies, and of course, that has also been my case for the companies I’ve worked for. As a community, we know how important IP is for companies but I think we still struggle to communicate this properly to society as a whole.

How can we improve that? How can we contribute to something that helps the IP community create better understanding, better IP awareness outside the IP bubble? I think that it all starts with good IP reporting. When you want to talk about something, you have to present it. You have to explain to people what you’re doing. That was the starting point for this project.