Akinwunmi, a former Public Relations Officer (PRO), Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), Lagos Chapter, who is also the Secretary, Business and Intellectual Property of the group, noted that there are lots of services waiting to be tapped.
According to Akinwunmi, It was this discovery and determination to expand the group’s professional horizon that led NIESV to create 15 faculties that are new areas in the profession.
One of these areas is the business asset and intellectual property valuation. “Everybody has one intellectual property or the other but not many people know the value of such asset, and there is no way one can protect the value of what he/she do not know.
“Although the laws on copyright and censors board are there, but, we discovered that, many actors and actresses do not get money for their intellectual property simply because they do not know the value in the first place. It is when you know the value that those assets could be used as collateral.
“ Similarly, there are intellectual property assets that remain dormant. For these assets to be economically beneficial, they must be turned into bankable assets. This can only be possible when you, the owner, knows the value by engaging a trained and qualified estate surveyors and valuers to undertake the valuation for you.
“In view of this, we are presently sensitizing the people to understand their intellectual property assets and how they can be economically rewarding”, Akinwunmi submitted.
Explining how individual can lay claim to intellectual property and benefited from it, he cited an ecample of how Nigeria has signed a pact with World Intellectual Property Organization (IWPO), which he said is a step to boost the efforts of the profession in this area, noting that everybody has intellectual property one-way or the other.
“Immediately you have a thought and you are able to document it, it has become your intellectual property. “Everyday, you see various sector coming up with one form of intellectual property or the other. All the researches FIIRO does are intellectual property. What we have now is that so many infringe on this law, and thereby doing much harm to the originators of the idea. It is therefore very necessary to revisit the copyright law”, he insisted.
On the business angle of intellectual property and how one’s thoughts can translate into economic value, the former NIESV’s spokesman was of the view that one’s thought is a solution to somebody’s problem.
When you are putting down your thoughts, you are thinking of business solutions. Take for instance, people are writing all manners of software, it is their intellectual property and when those properties are sold, they turn out to be money. So, I can write or put my thoughts in CD and then sell to a company that have the muscle to finance it to make it more popular.
“On that product, I should be collecting royalty. A family is still collecting royalty from Coca Cola till date. So, it is not a one-off thing pay; the payment continues depending on the agreement the originator had with the company. Before now, we didn’t have dedicated ringing tones, but we have them today. “That is a typical example of an intellectual property of somebody on which the originator should be drawing royalty, the same direction we are trying to toe as professional in the built environment.
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