Quarterly Newsletter: December 2004

Intangible Assets are BIG Business
Intangibles are defined as a right or nonphysical resource that is presumed to represent an advantage to the firm's position in the marketplace. Such assets include copyrights, patents, trademarks, goodwill, computer programs, capitalized advertising costs, organization costs, licenses, leases, franchises, exploration permits, and import & export permits. The Dow 30 Industrials with the exception of American Express report vast sums of value for their intangibles. Collectively, they report approximately $275,000,000,000.00 on their financial statements. Leading the group is GE at $55,000,000,000.00 with Home Depot pulling up the rear at $800,000,000.00. McDonalds and Coca-Cola each value the goodwill of their names at over $1,000,000,000.00. They are each dwarfed by Walt Disney's $17,000,000,000.00 value.

According to one source, there are 92 categories of Intellectual Properties and Intangible Assets. Do you know the value of yours?

NSAIDS started from what?
Aspirin is the most popular and best known of the NSAIDS. In fact, it was being used long before the concept of NSAIDS was even dreamed of. In 1758, the Reverend Edward Stone found that an extract from willow tree bark helped reduce fever and pain in his 50 patients. The extract was studied and refined for years, finally emerging as a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that became known as aspirin.

The class of 977
The USPTO has designated this class for the swarm of applications it expects to begin receiving from the rapidly developing area of Nanotechnology. The big challenge to the Patent Office is that an examiner that is trained in, say, chemistry will be running into Nanotechnology patent claims that also touch on physics and biology, and may overlook previous inventions or publications in those fields that are relevant to whether a new claim is patentable.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, a number of overlapping patents have already been issued. "The potential for years of legal battles could freeze development in its tracks" according to Lux Research.

Robotic Muscle Power
New plastic compounds are in development that will flex and contract like muscles when an electrical current is applied. Nanotechnology is leading the way in perfecting these materials which will produce movement in response to a stimulus in robots, giving them almost complete capacity for control of hand movement.

Technology Resource goes back to school
We have been studying and evaluating the "Economic Time Series" (Nobel Prize, 2003) models and variations that we will integrate into our valuation methodology starting in 2005. It will provide new tools for measuring volatility and other variables of valuations. Financial Analysts have accepted the work by Professors Granger & Engle as indispensable tools in asset pricing and risk analysis.

We look forward to adding this new tool to our valuation analysis models which also includes the Black-Scholes methodology (Nobel Prize, 1997.)

Nobel Prize Trivia
The Nobel Prize in Economics is the only Nobel Prize not established by Alfred Nobel's will. It was created by Sweden's Central Bank in 1968.

WE WISH FOR ALL OUR FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES A SAFE AND HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON.

Call us anytime for assistance. (423) 929-0380

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