Intellectual Capital and Property Rights (IPR) as the Key Asset of a Family Firm : A Case Study with an Evaluation Approach

Abstract

The role of immaterial production factors is becoming more and more important and they are estimated to be over two-thirds of what is required in production in our post-industrial time. Accordingly, the discussion of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) as key assets is increasing. If these assets are wrongly estimated, this can be very harm-ful in loan negotiations, credit ratings, taxation, and family business successions or sell-outs. The research question of the present study is: How does a family business owner evaluate the IPR goodwill of his company, and what are his experiences of fin-anciers' evaluations? The case firm in the study is a Finnish firm that produces rec-orded material, mainly music. The two theoretical approaches included in the litera-ture review are as follows: Intellectual capital and property rights (IPR) and Informa-tion asymmetry. The single-case study illustrates the problems of IPR evaluation. Major differences could be discovered in the evaluations of IPR and, according to the empirical data, this seems to be, to a great extent, a consequence of information asymmetry between the family enterprise and their financier. The limitation of the study is that it is based on a single case representing just one industrial branch and one country, but some analytical generalizations may still be possible. The main policy and educational implication is that new thinking in evaluating IPR assets as a family business resource would be needed in financial institutions as well as in governmen-tal industrial policy.