Intangible assets are full of conspiracies

We love to laugh at conspiracy theories. Who can possibly believe that extraterrestrials secretly rule the world or that aircraft exhaust brainwashes people? Conspiracies are silly, right?

Well, not exactly. Most conspiracy theories are a category of the mind (as in, imaginary patterns). But conspiracies are real. Very real. In fact, conspiracies may just be the most common part of any human society, including our own.

You might not realise it, but you’re involved in a conspiracy right now – and it also happens to be one of your company’s most valuable intangible assets.

To understand what’s going on, let’s define our terms.

A “conspiracy,” at its most basic definition, is any group of people working toward a common goal. So, that means a government is essentially a conspiracy that involves civil servants and politicians working together to operate the ship of state for the common good of the citizens. Sometimes these bureaucrats and politicians don’t “conspire” very well together, but the ship mostly sails in one direction.

Under the same definition, a business is also a conspiracy made up of employees and managers all working together to generate capital (oh yeah, and to sell their products or services). Businesses even have a special piece of paper called a “contract” which must be signed by each employee before they are allowed to participate in the conspiracy.

And don’t get us started on non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). These don’t have quite the same viciousness as a “blood in, blood out” contract with, say, a motorcycle gang or a spy ring. But business contracts and NDAs are on the same spectrum as getting a prison tattoo that makes a person part of a gang for life.

Even a family can be a conspiracy. Perhaps everyone in a family helps to buy a series of properties. They each sign the same paper, and the whole structure sits under a trust for the common good of the family. Wealth is protected in the trust and distributed within the family. The law ensures that no one else penetrates this conspiracy if they are not part of the family.

Conspiracies are everywhere.

While a business fits the basic definition of conspiracy, each business is filled with smaller, different kinds of conspiracies. For example, a company’s intellectual property, copyrights, or trademarks are wrapped up in layers of individual conspiracies to defend them from being used elsewhere without the owners’ permission.

That’s what all the NDAs and contracts are for. Lawyers help to describe an innovation or idea in a way that defines it as unique. Then they present those definitions in the form of a patent to a copyright authority. The authority judges if the innovation should be protected. A nominal fee is paid, and finally, a certificate is issued that says no one else can own the idea.

Take a step back, and it becomes clear that this whole process involves the business, lawyers and government conspiring together to protect an intangible asset on behalf of a larger conspiracy — the business.

Admittedly, this outline of how intellectual property rights work is a bit cartoonish, and patent attorneys will scoff at the accusation that they deal in conspiracies. Yet, by giving the right to use an innovation to one party, patent lawyers are directly involved in ensuring exclusion. The penalties for violating IP laws don’t rise to the level of a prison sentence. But every law, no matter how benign, has within it the implicit subtext of a prison term if violations compound and the insubordination continues.

So, even for something as simple as IP law, if a person refuses to submit to court rulings, they might be held in contempt of court. What began as an IP rights dispute could quickly escalate into more serious charges. If those charges are also ignored, the legal system has many ways to force a person to comply, up to and including a prison sentence. Ultimately, there are real teeth behind enforcing IP and copyright laws.

That innocent little IP contract sitting in the dusty filing cabinet protecting your company’s precious intangible assets could put someone in prison if they violate the law with enough intention and malice. The government itself is directly responsible for ensuring that no one else can use your IP.

Said differently, your company is involved in a conspiracy with the state. That’s what a patent is.

Of course, this is not controversial – or even bad. Copyright and intellectual property laws exist to help companies grow and thrive. Some might bemoan this system and say that all ideas should remain open to the public forever. But that’s not how the corporate system works. The system is a series of official conspiracies called “patents”, which are designed to protect ideas on behalf of their inventors.

Conspiracy theories about aliens are fun to entertain, although we try not to take them seriously. But in truth, every business is full of conspiracies, it’s just that no one notices IP and copyrights as conspiracies.

Are you thinking differently about intangible assets? Or are you still pondering our ruling alien overlords?