At 30, Jessica Zemple has taken on a big challenge. Her job is to build the technology infrastructure for the trading of an entirely new asset class. Traditionally, stocks and options for technology corporations derive their price from the market valuation of the enterprise as a whole. Zemple and the Intellectual Property Exchange International (IPXI) are asking investors to shift their thinking from broad-based valuations to looking at the specific valuation of intellectual property portfolios.
Jessica explained that a study by Ned Davis Research indicated that in 1975, intangible assets (patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets) comprised 16.8 percent of the market capitalization of companies in the S&P 500. That number increased to almost 80 percent in 2005. “We went from manufacturing products to manufacturing ideas,” Zemple said. “We feel the economic inversion is the perfect opportunity to build a new marketplace and we have several products that will allow investors, speculators, and hedgers to gain access to a new asset class, developing precise exposures to underlying technologies along the way.”