A knowledge-based system for assessing and managing intellectual property managerial risks for small-and-medium sized technological enterprises

Managing intellectual property (IP) is a critical issue that almost no company can avoid. This is particularly true for small and medium sized technological enterprises (SMTEs). Due to their limited resources, SMTEs typically do not devote sufficient effort to managing intellectual property (IP) risks. This may lead to serious financial and other losses for such companies. In this paper, a knowledge-based intellectual property managerial risk system (KIPMRS) has been developed to assess and manage IP managerial risk for SMTEs. The KIPMRS is a new method for managing intellectual property risk, which incorporates both rule-based reasoning (RBR) and case-based reasoning (CBR). These two features enable the achievement of continuous improvement of the system. Two real life SMTEs participated in the trial implementation of the KIPMRS described here. The SMTEs each used the system to help determine their IP managerial risks and hence to improve their practice for better managing their IP.