Ruder covers the AOL-Time Warner debacle, but never explains why it belongs in an IP book.

Down-on-its-luck apparel company Mossimo, bought on the cheap by Target, Ruder touts as an IP turnaround, a "brand company example," but never tells what the IP was. According to Ruder, Target licensed the MOSSIMO brand "exclusively for internal, private label use." So, it wasn't the brand name. If there was IP at the heart of the Target deal, you won't find out from Ruder.

In relaying the Intertrust saga, bought by Sony-Phillips while Microsoft was under the patent gun, Ruder neglects to tell the selling price, or that Microsoft had the opportunity to buy Intertrust, but, owing to sheer stupidity, paid more for patent infringement than it would have paid to acquire the company. Maybe candor isn't Ruder's shtick. Wouldn't want to offend a potential future client.

The chapter on intellectual property valuation, what should be the core of the book, is brief and a bit woolly. Ruder's description of the "market approach" comprises stating the obvious: that there isn't much of a market for IP, so it's not much of an approach. Ruder gets cute and facilely sophisticated by tossing in a net present value equation in discussing the "income approach." The bottom line, though, is that "an intellectual property owner and an investor have ample basis to argue over the appropriateness of discount rates and royalty rates in a valuation, and forecasting future market sizes and revenues is always subjective." Further, "constructing a hypothetical license is a very simple solution for a highly complex problem." Ruder's advice: "The best way to value an intellectual property asset is to view that asset as the basis for a new business."

Ruder's big case study is Coca-Cola. That's never been done in business school before. Ruder considers "pouring rights," e.g. no Pepsi at New England Patriots NFL games, the exclusive contractual right to a monopoly on the thirsty, intellectual property.

The section on IP investing strategies is informative in parts, but it's no playbook. The big bang concept Ruder has on patent trolls is that "to deny investors the right to enforce patents against infringers would be to remove a huge incentive for inventors to invent." It's a mixed metaphor with no metaphor. And here's a secret: "big companies sue each other regularly for patent infringement, and often the suits are not based on merit." Shocking.

Entertaining but garbled, Strategies for Investing in Intellectual Property, at $80, is not a good investment. Now there's a strategy.