This book discusses the main legal and economic challenges to the creation and enforcement of security rights in intellectual property and explores possible avenues of reform, such as more specific rules for security in IP rights and better coordination between intellectual property law and secured transactions law. In the context of business financing, intellectual property rights are still only reluctantly used as collateral, and on a small scale. If they are used at all, it is mostly done in the form of a floating charge or some other “all-asset” security right. The only sector in which security rights in intellectual property play a major role, at least in some jurisdictions, is the financing of movies. On the other hand, it is virtually undisputed that security rights in intellectual property could be economically valuable, or even crucial, for small and medium-sized enterprises – especially for start-ups, which are often very innovative and creative, but have limited access to corporate financing and must rely on capital markets (securitization, capital market). Therefore, they need to secure bank loans, yet lack their own traditional collateral, such as land.

The purpose of the publication is to assist States in developing modern secured transactions laws with a view to promoting the availability of secured credit. The Guide is intended to be useful to States that do not currently have efficient and effective secured transaction laws, as well as to States that already have workable laws but wish to modernize their laws and modernize them with the laws of other States.

The overall objective of the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions (the Guide) is to promote low-cost credit by enhancing the availability of secured credit. In line with this objective, the Supplement on Security Rights in Intellectual Property (the Supplement) is intended to make credit more available and at a lower cost to intellectual property owners and other intellectual property rights holders, thus enhancing the value of intellectual property rights as security for credit. The Supplement, however, seeks to achieve that objective without interfering with fundamental policies of law relating to intellectual property.

Economic development increasingly depends to a large extent on innovation. Innovation is generally covered by intellectual property (IP) rights and usually requires extensive funding. This book focuses on IP and debt financing as a tool to meet this demand. This book clarifies the situation of the use of IP as collateral in practice through a survey conducted in Japan on IP and debt financing. Various obstacles in the proper use IP and debt financing are identified, and some projects to facilitate its use are illustrated. IP and debt on a global scale, either by attracting foreign lenders or by collateralizing foreign IP rights, needs appropriate private international laws. This book analyzes such regulations in which the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has worked, paying due attention to the law of finance and insolvency law, as well as IP laws. However, further analysis is needed to identify under what conditions such solutions would show optimal effects. This book offers comprehensive analysis from an economic point of view.

Most employeers are astounded at how easily and quickly their proprietary information can get out of their control. In a large number of cases, theft of trade secrets often involves employees leaving a company to start their own business or work for a direct competitor.Nearly all books that address the topic of trade secrets have the “spy vs. spy perspective. The author approaches the topic from a practical business perspective and not simply creating “paranoia for paranoia’s sake. The material for this book comes from the author’s extensive work experience as a computer forensics consultant and manager on numerous theft of trade secrets cases. No-nonsense solutions to the most common intellectual property problems facing security managers, computer security professionals, corporate legal counsel, and human resource managers Sample agreements and forms that address specific business needs Coverage of threats ranging from physical security lapses to hackers to social engineering