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Objective: Intangibles have changed the concept of how business value is created, but intangibles still have restricted disclosure via accounting, and as a result there is pervasive information asymmetry. In 2021, the Corporate Governance Code (CGC) in Japan was revised to include new standards for companies in explaining or managing their intellectual property (IP) and other non-tangible asset strategies, but this soft law is already showing evidence of being interpreted in different ways by different companies. Among the goals of this study are understanding the connection between comply with or explain with Supplementary Principles (SP) 3.1.3 and 4.2.2 and the perception of managing executives about IP governance and disclosure, and whether this relationship differs for firms with a Price to Book Ratio (PBR) above and below 1. Method: A survey of the herds of IP departments in firms listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Standard Market was combined with the financial information of the firms and analysed using non-parametric tests and Spearman correlations to look for patterns conditional on valuations. Results: Firms with PBR < 1 comply with SP 4.2.2 as a component of the substantive governance, displaying managerial attention more in line with signalling because they are focusing on placating investors. In contrast, firms with PBR≥1 have no significant related to the two factors and exhibit firm specific cost driven disclosure that is selective rather than mandatory, while SP 3.1.3 has poor explanatory power in describing attitudes toward disclosure. Conclusion: The results are consistent with a disclosure threshold influenced by values at PBR = 1, which is likely to result in asymmetrical incentives for transparency and underlies the existence of variable degrees of compliance in Japan’s comply-or-explain system. The research contributes new internal-actor information, and the findings indicate that more concrete instructions or standardized examples on how to present intangible assets would help create more uniformity in the practices of firms and enhance the potential of the CGC.