Analysis On Information Disclosure System For Intellectual Property By Listed Companies

Data statistics and analysis on 67 prospectuses and 22 annual reports released by China Securities Regulatory Commission shows that the disclosure on intellectual property information by listed companies focuses more on disclosure of static information such as obtainment time, and protection period, but few disclosure on dynamic change of information such as the use of intellectual property and assets value, thus the current disclosure on intellectual property information by listed companies is still incomplete and inaccurate.The existence of these problems is largely due to less specific and relatively coarse rules for the disclosure on intellectual property information by listed companies as for the provisions for information disclosure by CSRC and other relevant departments. In the meanwhile, in most normative documents, intellectual property rights are required to be listed as an item under intangible assets to be disclosed. However, intellectual property rights and traditional intangible assets such as land rights are different in right nature and value change, thus the rules for information disclosure of intangible assets taken from land rights well do not apply to intellectual property. In addition, the uncertainty of the effect of intellectual property rights also makes it more difficult to correctly disclose intellectual property information.When it is difficult to accurately disclose intellectual property information of listed companies, at present in the violation of information disclosure obligation shall bear administrative responsibility in our country. However, administrative punishment can hardly play the role of the originally envisaged punishment and deterrence, and can not make up the damage to shareholders caused by the violation of information disclosure obligations. On the contrary, asking responsible person to bear civil liability can achieve the effect. Therefore, it is necessary to weaken administrative responsibility and expand civil liability.In the aspect of improving intellectual property information disclosure by listed companies, it is required to make adjustment at the legislative level and enterprise level. As for legislative level: one is to pay more attention to the disclosure of dynamic information such as the use of intellectual property rights, and a latest book value in the end in the prospectus of listed companies; two is to pay more attention to the disclosure of intellectual property rights and establish independent intellectual property information disclosure system in the annual report of listed companies; three is to change the accounting rules, and reduce the use of historical cost method to accounting measurement value of intellectual property rights. As for listed companies themselves, on one hand, they are required to strengthen intellectual property value assessment, and more accurately disclose the value of intellectual property by evaluating means. When choosing evaluation methods, listed companies shall give priority to income approach and carefully use cost method. Appraisal object should not be restricted to the patent right, trademark right and copyright, and domain names and proprietary technology should also be evaluated at the same time. Faced with trademark combination with main trademark and defensive trademark as well as joint trademark and patent pool in more special patent domain, it is required to evaluate the whole, rather than simply summing the individual. On the other hand, in addition to strengthening the assessment, internal departments of listed companies also need to pay more attention to intellectual property rights, establishing intellectual property rights department and well arranging the division of functions between departments to achieve unified management of intellectual property information and realize the enhancement of intellectual property information disclosure quality.