Every Chief Executive Officer of an organization, whether SME or national, knows that in order for a strategy to be fully realized, the company must find ways to measure the effectiveness of every activity. In a fast-phase world where industry and services are now being overshadowed by the vastness of knowledge and information, it is important for every company to not just protect its knowledge investment, but also measure its efficiency. This is where intellectual property metrics come in. But what are these metrics for intellectual property? How did it come to be?

It is interesting to know that during the last 30 years, the intellectual property investment or popularly called intellectual capital has become the foremost property of a business organization. Before, it was all about manpower, machines, and manufacturing facilities. If your company has the best machines in the world, you are an icon to follow. But the years that follow 1975 saw the emergence of a new type of asset now covering almost everything that a company possesses. Historically, before 1975, eighty percent of the value of the stock market is comprised of inventory, equipment, and factories. As the American market changed, the figures also drastically changed. The US market morphed from an industry-driven economy to a knowledge-based economy. Today, these economies are now turned into the information-based economy. Gone are the days when tangible assets rule the organization's assets.

To further support the evolution of the American economy from industrial to information, here is a look back at the transformation of the components of the S&P 500 Market Value. In the year 1975, it was recorded that 83.2% of a company's assets is said to be tangible. Only 16.8 % are tangible. Ten years later, 1985 saw a decrease in the percentage of tangible assets. It dropped from 83.2% to 67.6 %, the difference which is 32.4% is a 15.6% increase of intangible assets within the last ten years. By 1995, the percentage of intangible assets more than doubled. 68.4% of intangible properties now account for all of the company's assets, an incredible 36% increase over the last ten years. Come 2005, the figures had turned 360 degrees. Almost 80% of the stock market value was already composed of intangible assets. The remaining 20 %, of course, were the tangible assets.

The US is now outsourced by China when it comes to manufacturing. India has now outnumbered the United States in terms of service outsourcing. Because of the evolution of the market, most companies in the United States have now realized the importance of intellectual properties and therefore, proper management must be made to protect these non-physical assets. And in order to do this, organizations need the services of litigation companies.

Litigation services are professional service providers that aid businesses in creating management tools and strategies for intellectual property management. These companies consist of patent lawyers, patent prosecutors, trademark attorneys, litigators, and transactional attorneys. The activities include trade secret management, copyright, trademark licensing, and other patent issues. The main goal of these companies is to bring out the exact value of a company's IP assets. Now that you know intangible assets make up the most of your properties, it is time to invest more on intellectual property metrics.