Good Compliance Programs Help Get More From Your Intellectual Property

Download

Technology and globalization are some of the key factors behind the latest trend for Canadian companies to increasingly rely on licensing fees as a source of income. However, having a licensing agreement that brings in revenue is only as good as the compliance program around it.

Data on Canadian licensing activities is hard to come by. Even in the U.S. — a leader in this trend — there is strikingly little public data available. As a worldwide leader in licensing management services, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) began the process of building empirical analysis of the global technology licensing economy and the revenue leakage issues that have been triggered as a result of this growth. PwC recently published the 2005 Technology Licensing Marketplace Study — the data was U.S.-based. Although U.S. companies are ahead of Canadian companies in the development of licensing revenues, the U.S. data is a good indicator of things to come in Canada.