Intellectual Property Taxation

Book excerpt: The 2012 Student Update is accessible by clicking here. This casebook is the first to provide interdisciplinary coverage of two exciting areas of the law: intellectual property and taxation. Valuable business assets are increasingly in the form of intangible assets such as patents, trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and computer software. Moreover, with the arrival of global, e-commerce transactions on the Internet, new forms of intellectual property, such as domain names and web contents, have emerged. The creation, development, acquisition, and sale and licensing of these intellectual property assets have significant tax consequences. Authors Maine and Nguyen adopt the problem method in addressing intellectual property taxation, and cover both general and special tax principles governing different forms of intellectual property. The book's ten chapters are each devoted to the taxation of a major IP transaction such as intellectual property research and development, acquisitions, sales and licenses, and judgment awards and settlements. Every chapter contains a set of relevant problems, a summary of the black letter law, and excerpts of important cases and administrative pronouncements.