Our intellectual property audits have their place at various stages of the life of a company, and often during a given event (sale / acquisition / fund raising, etc.).
Objectives of an audit and/or assessment
Our intellectual property audits have their place at various stages of the life of a company, and often during a given event (sale / acquisition / fund raising, etc.).
They are also needed for the in-depth analysis of intellectual property portfolios or to ensure guarantees or financing based on the value of IP rights.
The VIDON Group also performs due diligence operations during customer fund raising, whether by calling for third-party investors (venture capital; etc.) or public offerings (stock market listing, etc.).
The audit may seek to assess the qualitative or quantitative value of intangible assets. Usually, it has to cover both.
In terms of qualitative assessment, the VIDON Group has acquired special experience in assessing standard-essential patents.
The ViDON Group puts its expertise to work for its customers to assess their needs with one primary objective: Optimizing the investment and the economic and strategic value that their intellectual property titles provide and, more generally, intangible assets that can be copyrighted or reserved.
Audit and assessment methodologies
Our audit and assessment methodologies cover all or part of a fourfold approach to the value of the intellectual property:
- legal analysis;
- technical analysis;
- commercial analysis;
- strategic analysis.
These different approaches are based on academic studies and validated by the experience accumulated by the VIDON Group during its more than 25 years of existence.
In the field of assessing standard-essential patents, our services include three levels of intervention:
- indirect assessment of essentiality;
- direct assessment of essentiality;
- complete assessment including an analysis of the essential patent’s validity (or patent application).
Concerning financial assessments, our consultants apply three traditional assessment approaches:
- acquisition cost approach;
- market value approach;
- analogy approach.
When necessary, our consultants use doctrines developed in the main jurisdictions, for example Georgia Pacific’s fifteen decision-making criteria in the United States of America. Furthermore, this checklist comes to the forefront when it comes to setting fees for so-called “FRAND” (“Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory”) licenses in cases of technologies that are both patented and standardized.
Our services are often carried out in a partnership with experts, notably certified public accountants; financial auditors; statutory auditors specialized in assessing contributions and/or financing packages for investments and growth.
Our services
The ViDON Group has developed complete expertise in intangible asset audits, notably for industrial property rights and titles, including unpatented know-how.
The Group has thus developed special audit and assessment services providing various degrees of intervention that are systematically adapted to meet its customers’ objectives.