Estate surveyors under the aegis of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) have been tasked to boost their knowledge on Intellectual Property (IP) valuation.
Experts, who spoke during an event organised by NIESV’s group, otherwise known as ‘The Business Assets and Intellectual Property Valuation’, said it was necessary, as IP had been discovered as one of the key areas of growing the economy.
Notwithstanding its potential, speakers at the event, however, lamented the state of IP industry in Nigeria.
To reverse the trend, the group’s Chairman, Lekan Akinwunmi, said that the NIESV’s President, Emma Wike, gave his nod to organize the training that intended among others to bring IP to the fore as a resource that can be used, managed and commercialised to provide economic and social environmental benefits for government at all levels, the community and business.
Akinwunmi said it was high time stakeholders paid more attention to the IP sector, adding that its value in the long run would impact positively on all stakeholders.
The group’s chairman said that every business starts with an idea and that idea is an essential intellectual property asset that can drive business development, economic prosperity and human progress.
He said: “While the opportunities are enormous, each business, regardless of its size, is focused on a core product or service that differentiates itself from other enterprises and competitors. Protecting an idea is protecting a business and the role that Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) ownership plays cannot be under – estimated in seeing the future of small-and medium-sized enterprises.”
”As property valuers, we represent the most rational professional group to ascertain IP value for consistency and in harmonising ‘tone of value’ between tangible and intangible assets of a business.”
One of the speakers, Thomas Ashaolu, who identified five categories of IP assets including technological, marketing, customer based, contract based and literary and artistic, said that, while the first four are associated with business and described as industrial property, the fifth simply referred to as ‘copyrights’.
He urged estate surveyors and valuers to develop themselves, pointing out that the nation’s IP industry was huge and largely untapped.
A nother speaker, Nosakhare Uwadiae said intellectual property assets have not received the desired consideration in the scheme of affairs in most corporations in developing economies.
According to him, in Nigeria, for instance, most reputable estate surveyors and valuers were yet to come to terms with the reality that IP assets constituted an appreciable percentage of the valuable assets of a company, corporation or any business concern.
Uwadiae, who lamented that the estate surveyors and valuers and valuation users in Nigeria till today concentrated primarily on tangible assets of real estate, said there was much room in the sector to be explored.
Another professional, Yomi Ibisola, said that estate surveyors and valuers have the opportunity now to raise the standard of valuations and increase the confidence in the work that they do on the development of intellectual property.
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