Intellectual Property

To uncover knowledge and create new analytic tools, Kusin & Company has developed an articulated portfolio of intellectual property to enable the commerce in art to attain 21st century marketplace precision, speed and accountability.

These inventions have demolished barriers that commonly segregate the qualitative from the quantitative. As a result, connoisseurs and portfolio strategists now collaborate routinely—an essential first step toward regarding art as the asset it is.

Kusin & Company IP includes

• Systems to:
  • catalogue works of fine art, decorative art and antiquities, and collectibles, and to define their distinct curatorial sub-markets
  • tag auction venues with locale-specific information—taxes, tariffs and regulations—that affect prices, transaction costs and liquidity
  • standardize historical auction-price and art dealer-price changes over time
  • calculate confidential reserve prices—and obscured hammer prices—from raw auction results
  • precisely calculate and de-risk financial guarantees of works sold at auction
  • index art prices from dealers and auctioneers, correlating them with price changes in capital markets

• Bespoke black box utilities to:
  • define proprietary trading opportunities
  • provide art museums with empirical analysis to support their collection priorities
  • enable banks and non-banks to quantify the risk of using art as loan collateral and to price secured loans
  • allow insurance underwriters to assess art risk—and underwrite coverage—precisely

• A qualitative overlay to inform and guide formal underwriting decisions when:
  • calculating financial guarantees
  • crafting portfolio strategies that include art-price changes
  • trading for proprietary accounts
  • evaluating futures transactions as a tool for reducing the risks of owning art

The seamless integration of all the preceding products, processes and standards will make it possible for proprietary trading, futures trading and comprehensive custodial services for art to take place in real time, placing the commerce for art squarely into the 21st century.