For science and technology enterprises with multiple intellectual property rights, how to promote the effective transformation of "intellectual property" into "assets"? Among them, the role of intellectual property pledge financing has become increasingly prominent. However, there are still many blocks in the advancement of intellectual property pledge financing. As a pledge, how to evaluate the value of intellectual property? Once the enterprise cannot repay the loan, how can the bank dispose and realize the intellectual property? Why the intellectual property with an estimated value of up to 3 million yuan could only realize 200,000 yuan? To this end, the reporter launched an investigation into the relevant situation in Beijing and Zhejiang.
Because of the high degree of professionalism, most bank staff do not have the necessary skill to evaluate, so they need to rely on external agencies. Appraisal agencies charge higher prices, usually 2% to 3% of the final appraisal value, and some even as high as 5% to 6%. If the final valuation of the company’s intellectual property rights is 3 million yuan, and the bank lends 1 million yuan at a pledge rate of about 30%, the company will need to pay at least 60,000 yuan for evaluation, which will invisibly increase the company’s comprehensive financing costs.
In order to reduce corporate expenditures, many banks adopt a "self-assessment" model, but it actually cooperates with external evaluation agencies, and the latter does not charge evaluation fees. "The reason why the evaluation agency is free is that through the cooperation with banks, the evaluation agency can learn about the patents that each company have, and then establish a cooperative relationship with the company to provide services for their subsequent patent annual fee payment, new project declaration, etc. it’s the same as winning customers for themselves.” said the relevant person in charge of a city commercial bank in Zhejiang.
But this type of "mutual benefit" model is not a long-term solution. In order to solve the problem fundamentally, as a key city in the construction of the national intellectual property operation service system, Taizhou, Zhejiang took the lead. Taizhou Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau has established long-term cooperative relations with Taizhou’s intellectual property talent and expert pool, and have trained 232 basic talents of banks in intellectual property evaluation.
But what if the assessment is not accurate? This is also a major obstacle restricting the development of intellectual property pledge financing. "From a practical point of view, the credit-increasing utility of intellectual property pledges is low, which are weak guarantees and credit loans. In order to prevent risks, banks mostly choose to add collateral, such as requiring companies to take out unsecured real estate." The person in charge in a corporate finance department of a large state-owned bank’s Beijing branch said that the bank's pure intellectual property pledge loans accounted for no more than 20% of the total intellectual property pledge loans.
"In order to solve the above pain points, our idea is to 'package' products and increase the pledge ratio, such as 'patent + trademark' mixed pledge." Cao Guangqun said that as of the end of 2020, among the newly issued intellectual property pledge loans in Taizhou, 43.7% of the intellectual property rights’ pledge is used as the only guarantee type for loans, which is an increase of 20.5 percent from 2019.
In addition to the difficulty of evaluation, the time-consuming of intellectual property pledges’ registration and the difficulty of disposal and circulation also hinder the related businesses’ advancement.
Many interviewed companies admitted that if patent rights are involved, they can go through relevant pledge procedures at the local intellectual property office. The time-length is relatively short, usually one week. However, if copyright is involved, the pledge procedure takes a long time and needs to be confirmed by CNIPA. The process takes one to two months.
In addition, the Beijing Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau has coordinated with relevant departments to explore the establishment of an "Intellectual Property Pledge Financing Service Center" on the basis of the "Beijing First Loan Service Center", including the evaluation and pledge registration, and strive to achieve the "one-stop" processing.
It is worth noting that, in addition to a series of problems such as valuation and registration of pre-loan management, for post-loan management, once the enterprise cannot repay the loan, it will be more difficult for the bank to dispose of and realize the pledge.
"The intellectual property valued at 3 million yuan can only be realized at 200,000 yuan or 300,000 yuan in the end, but the bank loan is 1 million yuan. What about the loan loss of 700,000 to 800,000 yuan?" Since a sustainable and commercialized intellectual property trading market has not yet been established, it is difficult to dispose of pledges, and cannot cover credit risks, people from several banks said during the interview.
Therefore, many industry insiders suggested that the focus should be on improving the disposal and circulation system of intellectual property pledges, increasing the activity of intellectual property transactions, and smoothing the circulation of intellectual property transaction information; at the same time, reducing the degree of influence of factors including legal factors, time factors, market factors and other uncertainties in its transaction process.
Regarding the issues mentioned above, industry insiders said that, first, it is significant to continue to promote the implementation of "due diligence and exemption" to relieve the worries of bank staff; second, make good use of discount interest and fee policies; third, enrich risk compensation channels.
