Intellectual Property

In addition to managing financial capital, a community’s economic system also administers the community’s intellectual assets and property (IP), which are another kind of capital.

In today’s hyper-competitive economy, businesses waste IP by being secretive, possessive, or disorganized about proprietary processes, products, and inventions.^[1] When a company discovers or invents something, they usually either bring it to market or lock it in a vault. Very seldom do companies utilize all the value of their IP by employing it in a variety of fields.^[2]

NewVistas takes a different approach to intellectual property. Each community commonly owns and manages all IP brought into or created within that community. In addition to benefitting the whole community, this approach helps contractors and VistaBizzes leverage and protect IP better than the original creators could do on their own.^[3]

The community digitizes and synergizes IP at the scale of 75,000–100,000 participants, which is small enough to manage well yet large enough for the IP to reach its full potential.

The central NewVistas platform allows all the community’s contractors and VistaBizzes to search and apply for a field-of-use license to the community’s common IP, including patents, copyrights, inventions, code, drawings, systems, processes, and information developed by other contractors and VistaBizzes.

Thus, businesses that join the economic community can build value much faster than they could on their own.

The NewVistas approach to intellectual property motivates individual incentive to create while also promoting common ownership.

While all IP is held in common, inventors and creators receive an exclusive license from the community to use the IP they (or their contractors) develop within a specific field of interest and build a business around that use.

This field of business could be a technology sector, an industry, a customer market, or even a geographical location. In most cases, if the community spins off other businesses based on a creator’s IP or licenses the IP for use in other fields of business, the IP creator receives a percentage of the net profits or proceeds generated by that IP.

In addition to administering the community’s financial and intellectual capital, enabling existing small businesses to become VistaBizzes, and helping individuals identify their stewardships within the community, the Human & Financial Capital Department helps community participants continually develop their human capital.^[4] Public servants coordinate training, arts, recreation, and other opportunities to help individuals grow, prosper, and reach their full potential. The NewVistas approach revolves around lifelong education.

1. See, for example, David M. Katz, “A Company’s Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste,” http://ww2.cfo.com/risk-compliance/2001/07/a-companys-mind-is-a-terrible-thing-to-waste/↩
2. According to Henry Chesbrough of the University of California, Berkeley, “Besides being expensive, corporate innovation has also historically been insular. This closed approach carries an opportunity cost. Most large companies do not use or license most of their patents, save their ‘crown jewels.’”↩
3. For an interesting viewpoint on “The Importance of Intellectual Property Valuation and Protection,” visit https://www.marsh.com/us/insights/research/importance-of-intellectual-property.html↩
4. According to Forum for the Future, “Human capital incorporates the health, knowledge, skills, intellectual outputs, motivation, and capacity for relationships of the individual. Human capital is also about joy, passion, empathy, and spirituality.” When a society sustainably develops human capital, “Individuals are adept at relationships and social participation, and throughout life they set and achieve high personal standards for their development and learning. There is access to varied and satisfying opportunities for work, personal creativity, and recreation.” https://www.forumforthefuture.org/project/five-capitals/overview ↩