The Study On Accounting Problems Of Intellectual Property Products

With the rapid development of knowledge economy, intellectual property rights has become the important content of a nation’s "soft power". According to the U.S. department of commerce economics and statistics administration, the United States patent and trademark office (April 11,2012) jointly issued on the intellectual property rights and the American economy:industrial focus, according to a report of innovation, is the major driving factors in promoting economic growth and national competitiveness, granting and protection of intellectual property rights is the key to promote innovation and creativity is the fundamental element of enterprise competition and market economy. Based on the background, the research on the problem of intellectual property products began to be concerned, and how to establish a scientific and reasonable accounting theory and method system became the basis of research on this problem, the reason is that more accurate analysis the knowledge economy, the various factors of intellectual property products in production and trading links economic contribution rate, and the impact on the national economy, must be for all product related activities in scientific calculation and input and output of accounting, finally using national accounts will be its reasonable records and, thus recognizing intellectual property products under the knowledge economy the value of intangible capital appreciation after the real appearance of GDP, provided the basis for macroeconomic analysis and decision-making.The issue of SNA(2008)(System of National Accounts,2008) contributed to the guidance of the scientific method to accounting intellectual property products. According to the America revised accounting specifications, since 1960s, the intellectual property products investment has ascended from 9.6% to 22.9%, whereby, Software and R&D investment developed fairly rapidly,10.4% and 9.5% of asset investment, respectively, Entertainment and the creation of literary and Arts have less proportion and the growth is relatively stable. Such an American statistics gave the whole world a great shock. And no doubt it enlightened China as well.However, there are difficulties with summarizing intellectual property products. Firstly, China’s existing statistic data is incomplete. The whole society fixed assets investment exclude intangible assets, such as R&D, Software, Database, Mineral resources exploration and expenditure, and the original works of literature and arts, etc. Although the fundamental data such as research and development expenditure adheres to a regular release cycle, China is still imperfect in the Statistical specification, system and methods, techniques and so on. All those caused some basic data uncollectible. The breakthrough point is to conduct an accurate classification for the intellectual property products. Moreover, intellectual property products have specific characteristics, compared with general products. Generally, it’s hard to calculate its assets directly. Commonly used method is evaluation. Nevertheless, China still battles over how to evaluate the intellectual property products. The key is to set up a measurement system for intellectual property products. Last but not at least, lacking in a complete accounting framework, the intellectual property products related data cannot be compiled or expressed in a certain pattern, according to the criterion defined by the economic analysis, decision and policy. The key is to study the calculation of the intellectual property products. Using economic flow related variable value, login appropriate account, to avoid omission or duplicated account and to fully display the whole economic movements of the intellectual property products.Based on the above analyses, a theoretical research, probed on the basis of SNA(2008) in the revision of intellectual property products classification and accounting generated. The paper makes an accurate definition for the intellectual property concept and connotation. Meanwhile, the paper takes it as a start point, combining with international standard manuals, for elaborating the intellectual property products classification. Furthermore, combing with the reality of our country, an appreciable classification system is suggested. Based on these discussions, the paper also assesses the value of the key classification variables, and finally through the national accounts record, truly mirrors intellectual property movements in the whole economic system and its contributions to the economic development.This paper consists of seven chapters.The first chapter is the introduction, containing research background and significance, combined with relevant research literature both at home and abroad, and pointing out the research framework and method, main innovation and limitations. This section is relatively independent.Chapter two to chapter six is the main part of the paper.The second chapter studies the basic concept and theoretical issues. Any method is supposed to be used at the start point of its theoretical basis review. Without a clear and exact framework, it cannot be managed well. Hence, the paper firstly elaborates relevant concept and theory, involved in the intellectual property accounting. Specifically, this paper firstly introduces the relevant concepts of product, property, and capital, and analyzes their correlations as well. From view of accounting, this section makes an explicit expression of key concepts involved in intellectual capital measurement, such as net capital stock, gross capital stock, fixed capital consumption, capital service and productive capital stock, clarifies the relations between those concepts, and illuminates the connections between intellectual property capital accounting and national accounting.The third chapter studies the ring fence of intellectual property accounting. This is a fundamental issue in the research of national accounting. According to the SNA(2008) proposed view of intellectual property incorporated into the national accounting, this paper clarifies the fuzzy understanding of the scope of intellectual property products in the economic theory field. Meanwhile, this paper elaborates the guiding significance of social labor theory of labor in the national accounting.In Chapter Four, this research focuses on the classification of intellectual property accounting objects. The accounts establishment depending on the accounting objects are scientifically classified. This paper analyzes the classification rules of SNA. In accordance with other international standard manuals, including ISIC Rev.4, MSITS 2010, EBOPS 2010, CPC Ver.2, the paper classifies the intellectual property products respectively from static dimensions and dynamic dimensions. At last, this paper classifies our national economic industry (GB/4754-2011). In view of our economic and accounting foundation, some obvious unsuitable specifications are abandoned. Simultaneously, the study comes up with a thought for the classification of our intellectual property accounting objects.Chapter Five focuses on the study of capital measurement. This is the key point of research in accounting. On the basis of capital accounting manual (2009), abide by the IPP rules, the paper probes the ways for measuring the capital stock and capital flow of the intellectual property goods. Besides, in this section, the paper pays more attention on the applied research of R&D, software and database measurement. And on this basis, the paper tries to study the key variables, which affect the capital stock and capital flow.Chapter Six mainly studies in accounts checking. It’s the niche for the accounting research. Precisely because SNA(2008) reinterpreted the meaning of intellectual property products and imports its stock measurement and capital service, relevant accounting issues arise up, such as productive accounting, capital formation accounting, capital stock and consumption accounting. So it is necessary to establish the connection between the intellectual property products with national accounts, and to further explore satellite account establishment of intellectual property products.Chapter Seven is the conclusion and prospect, which summarises the whole paper, and based on that points out the future improvement directions.