The Idea Economy: Battle Over Right to Sell Knowledge

In another era, a nation's most valuable assets were its natural resources -- coal, say, or amber waves of grain. But in the information economy of the 21st century, the most priceless resource is often an idea, along with the right to profit from it.

This reality is transforming business and creating new diplomatic fault lines between continents. Some companies -- Thomson of France, in consumer electronics, and BTG of Britain, in technology, for example -- can make more money selling access to their ideas than from building anything themselves. The right to profit from a breakthrough idea can be so valuable that the contest over the concept can be more decisive than the competition for consumers, as Sony and Toshiba demonstrate in their tug of war over whose next-generation DVD patents will win out, long before the discs come to market.

From the United States to Europe and Japan, more patents were sought in the past 20 years than in the previous 100, evidence that protecting the rights to an idea is itself growing in importance. Patents ''are becoming the highest-value assets in any economy,'' said Jerry Sheehan, an economist with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.

But a crisis is at hand, say government officials, corporate executives and academic experts, and the future of idea creation as the grease of the global economy, the force in deciding winners and losers, is in the balance.