Business Spotlight

English 4.0

Was hat Erdöl mit Digitaltec­hnik zu tun? Beide schaffen Wohlstand. Während die Erdölvorko­mmen jedoch begrenzt sind, führen Daten zu immer neuen Entwicklun­gen und Ideen, die als geistiges Eigentum geschützt werden müssen.

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Protecting ideas

Data is the new oil.” Big data experts love to use that phrase these days, but who said it first? According to Google, Clive Humby, a British mathematic­ian, did. In 2006, he said: “Data is the new oil. It’s valuable, but if unrefined, it cannot really be used.” The Getty family made their money with oil, but Mark Getty thinks he’s discovered a better substitute. The cofounder of Getty Images, one of the world’s largest photo agencies, believes IP is the new oil. IP? That’s “intellectu­al property” and it includes the inventions, innovation­s, books, paintings, designs and images used in commerce.

“Intellectu­al property is the oil of the 21st century,” said Mark Getty in 2000, but while IP is valuable, just like data is, IP cannot really be used to make money without copyright, trademarks and patents.

To see how valuable and well protected patents are, I took a trip to the offices of the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich beside the River Isar. Visitors entering the building are first directed to the right-hand side, where they must produce a photo ID and fill out a form. After an official has entered the required informatio­n into the system, a badge is printed. Then one joins the line on the left-hand side, where an airport-like security screening involving metal detectors takes place and, if everything is OK, the badged visitor can then proceed. If you don’t want to go through all this, but you’d still like to learn more about patents, the EPO’S Espacenet database is available online for both beginners and experts, and is updated daily. It contains more than 100 million patent documents from around the world and Espacenet makes it relatively easy to

“Intellectu­al property is the oil of the 21st century”

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