“It is definitely not a mature area like accounting standards for physical assets, which is why I think in the world ... whether it is the accounting bodies or the valuation bodies, this is a subject of great interest and it is an area that’s developing, and it is an area that we are also interested in Singapore,” says Tan Kong Hwee, CEO of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS).
IPOS is working with the Institute of Valuers and Appraisers for Singapore to develop a set of new IA valuation guidelines. Tan hopes to have the guidelines published in the second half of 2026.
“This is [being] developed by the valuers themselves [and] it is a first step towards getting valuers to comply with a certain set of guidelines so that the way we should go about valuing the IA going forward will be more standardised,” Tan says.
Tan became chief executive of IPOS on March 1, 2025. Both of his predecessors had legal backgrounds: Rena Lee, who headed the agency from 2020 to 2025, is now Singapore’s Ambassador for International Law, while Daren Tang, who served from 2015 to 2020, has been director general of WIPO since 2020.
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Unlike Lee and Tang, who hold bachelor’s and master’s degrees in law, Tan graduated from Kyoto University with a master’s degree in electrical engineering. He began his career as a systems engineer at the Ministry of Home Affairs before joining the Economic Development Board (EDB), where he spent nearly 20 years developing sectors including aerospace, marine and offshore, urban mobility and space technology.
“Coming into IPOS, there definitely was a learning curve,” Tan says. “But I think that the learning curve is not so different from what other people have to go through when they change their jobs or join a different domain.”
“IP (intellectual property) is actually at the intersection of law, business, as well as innovation and is not as inaccessible as most people think,” Tan adds. “I was pleasantly surprised to find that at least a quarter of our employees at IPOS come from the engineering, science and technology [sectors]. These are our patent examiners. Without understanding science and technology, it’s not possible to do a patent examination.”
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The interdisciplinary aspects of IP make Tan’s background at the EDB an asset to his current role. Engaging with businesses is something that both the EDB and IPOS have to do, given the commercial benefits companies can reap by using their IP effectively.
Tan notes that the Singapore IP Strategy 2030, a national strategy that focuses on strengthening the city-state’s IA and IP regime, is at its midway point since its launch in 2021.
The first phase focused on legal frameworks and Singapore’s international treaty commitments. The second phase is about helping enterprises realise the value of their IP — and that’s where Tan comes in.
“There is a learning curve. I have to learn a lot more about the legal concepts behind IP, but the business knowledge, the engineering knowledge [that I have] puts me in a good position to drive the work that is required going forward.”
IP isn’t just law
One common misconception about IP is that people think it is just a legal concept, when it can help to drive business growth. “Companies that have more IP — whether these are brand assets, technology, patents and so on — tend to command higher revenues, higher profits and higher market capitalisation,” says Tan, citing studies done by IPOS and WIPO, which show that companies with more IP tend to do better.
This is the key message that IPOS is hoping to communicate to businesses: It’s not enough to have a reserve of intangible assets behind your business; you have to communicate it to your investors if you want to leverage them to grow your market capitalisation.
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Last year, IPOS unveiled its Intangibles Disclosure Framework (IDF). The IDF outlines the principles that businesses should abide by when disclosing and communicating their IA to stakeholders. “What we tried to do with IDF was to respond to what the industry has been telling us about: how there was a lack of a common language to discuss intangibles, to review what sort of intangibles they have,” Tan says.
“So, what IDF endeavours to do, really, is to provide a common language so that there is a more common way of understanding what is being articulated,” Tan adds. “It provides a certain structure, and what the structure offers is to help with understanding, but more importantly, it helps you perform comparisons across different companies.”
To flesh out how the IDF can be used effectively, IPOS worked with Singapore-listed Nanofilm to publish a benchmark report using the IDF. The report, which was presented at IP Week @ SG 2025, explored the deep-tech company’s various IAs, such as customer-related intangibles and technology-related intangibles.
Tan says IPOS worked closely with Nanofilm to develop the report. This includes putting the company through a masterclass about the IDF. IPOS’s benchmark reports emerged from a collaboration with WIPO Singapore, the Singapore Exchange and the Stock Exchange of Thailand as part of their Foundational Intangibles Disclosure initiative. That said, IPOS did run into some obstacles when writing the report with Nanofilm.
“The first challenge was around translating the technology-speak and technical details into something that can be easily understood when disclosed,” Tan says. “Sometimes, patents are couched in a more legalistic manner, so there is a need to translate that kind of language and make it easily understood.”
“The second was that there is obviously a balance to be struck between what you actually know, what you can really communicate, versus what you want to communicate and you can communicate publicly,” Tan adds. “For some things, when you make it publicly known, it could be detrimental to your business because it’s easily copied and so on.”
Ultimately, the IDF is not a one-size-fits-all model that applies to every business out there. Tan says that the IDF would be more useful for companies that are thinking about licensing their IP. Companies that are just looking to integrate their IP into their products do not really need to make such disclosures.
“It’s not for everyone, but at certain life stages, when you are trying to raise funds, you are trying to license your technology, and this is where having clarity around how you articulate and communicate what intangible assets you have becomes very important.”
When it comes to mergers and acquisitions (M&A), companies tend to overpay for their acquisitions because they are overestimating the goodwill they are netting from their purchase. This has tarred the reputation of IA, with sceptics arguing that without consistent valuation techniques, the value of these intangibles is prone to fudging.
“This is really just how the market is behaving,” Tan says. “It may hurt the credibility, but I can say that directionally, at least within the IA/IP community, it is moving towards more discipline and therefore greater adherence to principles as well as guidelines going forward.”
It is an asset
Strangely, even though Singapore has long been marketing itself as an IP hub, its banking and financial sector has lagged behind peers like Hong Kong and the US in terms of allowing businesses to tap into their IP for financing. Tan says IPOS has received multiple calls from businesses and entrepreneurs for similar IP financing products.
“The age-old complaint in Singapore is how it’s very hard to sometimes get a loan done unless you use your own house as collateral,” Tan says. “A lot of entrepreneurs have that complaint. The innovative companies will say, ‘Actually, I have something very precious, which is my IP.’
“We are trying to understand the space a little bit better. What are financiers and banks thinking? So, it’s an open call for financiers who want to work with us to co-develop a new kind of IP financing product. We will be happy to have a discussion and understand their perspective better because there’s some demand for this kind of product.”
IA meets AI
AI might be the hottest piece of innovation right now, but the road toward its development is littered with legal disputes over the way AI companies obtained the data used to train their models.
In 2023, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, arguing that the ChatGPT maker had used its articles for training purposes. Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in Oct 2024, saying that the AI start-up was copying its content illegally.
“If a piece of writing is behind a paywall, technology companies should not be circumventing the paywall; it is illegal for them to circumvent the paywall and illegally download content for purposes of training,” Tan says.
Under Singapore’s new Copyright Act, which came into force on Nov 21, 2021, companies looking to extract data from copyrighted works without the owner’s consent can only do so under the computational data analysis exception. The exception states that copies can only be made when companies have lawful access to the material, such as through a subscription, and the content can only be used for data analysis purposes.
Tan says regulators like IPOS need to strike a balance when crafting policies and legislation. They have to protect the rights of copyright holders without limiting the pace of technological innovation.
“In an advanced economy like ours, you need both creative people as well as technologically innovative people for the economy to grow. Hence, we have to balance, when we create policies, the interests of both sides in our laws.”
