Search results

This paper focuses on the strategic inclusion of reciprocity clauses in the licensing commitments disclosed by firms claiming standard essential patents (SEPs) in the telecom industry. We highlight the main cost and benefit of using these clauses for SEPs holders, namely, a possible deterrence effect for potential standard users on the one hand, and a legal instrument to prevent holdup and negotiate cross-licenses with other SEPs owners on the other hand.

We formulate general hypotheses explaining firms’ disclosure strategies with respect to reciprocity clauses, and use an original dataset of 19,601 patent disclosures in 12 different ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) projects (including UMTS, GSM, 3GPP, or GPRS) to test them empirically.

Our econometric results first confirm our predictions that reciprocity clauses are used as an insurance mechanism in technologically complex environments. They are more frequently included in patent disclosures when the ownership of SEPs at the project level is more fragmented. We also find that firms do not claim reciprocity clauses before having already declared a significant number of non-reciprocal SEPs in the same project, which suggests a deterrence effect on standard users that must be balanced by a strong patent position.

Our findings highlight a trade-off for the SEPs holder to insert a reciprocity clause. There is both a cost and a benefit of adding this clause to the patent licensing commitment. Contrary to the usual literature on the subject, we do not analyze the general patenting strategies but the conducts on the licensing terms.

The World Health Organization estimated that in 1999 roughly one-third of the world's population lacked access to essential medicines that would have saved or improved their lives. Our analysis focuses on how pharmaceutical product patents restrict access to essential medicines in developing countries. It is well established that pharmaceutical product patents provide little incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop new medicines designed to treat diseases prevalent in developing countries or to market in developing countries those patented medicines developed to treat diseases prevalent in developed countries. Economists have developed theoretical models showing that these incentives could be changed if (1) developing countries provided intellectual property protection for new pharmaceutical innovations and (2) an international regulatory framework were established to facilitate pharmaceutical companies setting lower prices in developing countries and higher prices in developed countries for patented medicines. We develop an index of property rights in pharmaceutical innovations covering 129 countries from 1960 to 2005. It shows that in 1960 only a handful of countries provided significant protection for pharmaceutical innovations, but by 2005 over 95 percent of countries in our sample provided significant statutory protections. However, an international framework to allow pharmaceutical companies to price discriminate has not been put in place. We conclude that international price discrimination mechanisms, compulsory patent licenses, and regional patent buyouts are not viable mechanisms for providing access to essential medicines to patients in developing countries. Global patent buyouts are more likely to achieve this goal, as they are not founded on an impractical separation of pharmaceutical markets in developing and developed countries and they provide critical incentives to develop new essential medicines.

Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

The purpose of the paper is to advance a framework that can assess and analyze the value of patent portfolios. On this purpose, the framework develops a conceptual and comprehensive index, the patent portfolio value index (PPVI), to assess the patent innovation level and suggest economic-strategic guidelines.

The authors have designed and applied a framework that synthesizes into a single index the results of a multiple criteria approach, based on information derived from quantitative objective data (claims, citations, and market coverage), information related to qualitative determinants (strategic positioning and economic importance), and information derived from decision makers’ perceptions and judgments.

The authors have applied the PPVI to the 3,532 patent portfolio documents in an Italian worldwide player in aerospace and defense market. The combined analysis, provided by the PPVI and a qualitative synoptic representation, has made it possible to understand the strategic positioning and alignment of patents with the core business of the company. The results of the analysis have provided managers with the necessary suggestions regarding action items to be performed: to reinforce, license, try to dismiss, or sell some of the examined patents of the portfolios.

The PPVI supplies a quick procedure to ascertain the profitability of patents and accounts for the value of a patent portfolio from an internal business perspective.

As it is built and defined, the PPVI shows elements of novelty compared to the other indexes existing in the literature, in that it follows a multiple criteria approach by merging quantitative and qualitative information.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the core elements and their constitutive activities of innovation of high-technology enterprises (HTEs) in the context of China to embrace effective management processes for dealing with standards setting.

The basic methodology of the empirical investigation is a single case study of ZTE Corporation (ZTE), a leading Chinese manufacturer in the telecommunication industry. Interviews were conducted from November 2008 to July 2009 with ZTE’s managers and senior R&D employees, as well as with R&D personnel from ZTE’s partners. Interviews were carried out face to face or by emails and supplemented by telephone calls and online communications. Secondary data provide complementary information.

The key to innovation for HTEs pursuing dominant positions in high-technology industries is standardization-oriented innovation. To deal with special requirements raised by the peculiarities of standardization for HTEs’ innovation management, HTEs need to emphasize three core elements in innovation, i.e. strategic innovation planning, internal R&D practices and external co-operative innovation, and focus on their key component activities. Moreover, through the case study of ZTE, three enabling factors for standardization-oriented innovation – intellectual property rights (IPR) management, market focus and co-operation along industry chains – are identified.

This paper is an attempt to understand and configure key innovation activities within a standards setting. It proposes a model for innovation management of HTEs in the Chinese economy, with three critical elements and their key constitutive activities being highlighted and three enabling factors being identified.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the paradox that arises when firms simultaneously share and protect their knowledge in an alliance with other organizations. The goal of this paper therefore is to explore this tension field in such a coupled open innovation process and to identify which strategies can be developed to cope with this tension.

The study was initially guided by a literature review and exploratory interviews, and it ultimately develops an inductive framework based on a multiple case study approach. The paper presents eight cases of a focal firm involved in a particular R&D collaboration. The case studies are based on a variety of data sources, including a number of semi‐structured interviews.

This paper unravels the tension field of knowledge sharing and protection in R&D collaborations, with the knowledge characteristics at the core and with the knowledge embodiment and relational dimension as mediating factors. These forces are in turn influenced by the collaboration characteristics and environment. Moreover, the case studies show different ways to cope with the tension between knowledge sharing and protection, such as an open knowledge exchange strategy and a layered collaboration scheme with inner and outer members. Licensing is moreover presented as a concrete way to implement such coping strategies.

This paper provides an holistic perspective on the knowledge paradox in R&D collaborations as a coupled process of open innovation. Moreover, it describes two concrete strategies to cope with the tension field as well as the role and implications of licensing as a particular mechanism to overcome the open innovation paradox.

Profit is often moralized by activists, but scant research has carefully examined what profit is for these activists or how they use it to create a more just world. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social movements use counter accounts of profit as tools of resistance.

A multiple case study design, informed by framing theory, is used to trace the framing of profit from activists’ counter accounts to actions they precipitated. Specifically, the study examines counter accounts of profit from the UK abolition movement, Médecines Sans Frontières access to essential medicines campaign and Brigitte Bardot Foundation’s opposition to the Canadian seal hunt, and how their framings of profit influenced change.

Activists reframe profit to create visibilities and bridges to the suffering of distant others. Reframing the calculation and boundary of profit is a strategy to elicit moral outrage, hope and ultimately a more just world. Through these reframings, activists in three different social movements were able to change the possibilities of who and what can be profitable, and how.

The inherently incomplete nature of accounting frames give rise to accounting’s vulnerability to non-accountants to assert their views of a moral profit. Accounting therefore is both a means of control at a distance but also “emancipation at a distance.”

Scholars have asserted that accounting can be used for resistance, few studies have examined how. By examining how activists assert what profit is – and should be – the paper documents and theorizes profit as contested and highlights accounting’s emancipatory potential.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for understanding core technological competencies and identifying the trends on the technological convergence of a business ecosystem using the patent information of leading firms in the system.

The proposed framework is composed of two steps: time-sequential text clustering analysis for comprehending changes in general technological fields and association rule analysis for identifying the trends of convergences in each field. The authors applied the proposed framework to the patents applied to United States Patent Trademark Office by Samsung Electronics, a market leader of the electronics industry, during the period from 2000 to 2011.

In the sequential text clustering analysis, trends of 14 technological fields such as data storage medium and data processing, mobile, lights and heats and memory are identified. Moreover, changes of technological convergence in each field are identified using association rule analysis. For instance, in the case of technologies related to lights and heats, convergences occurred between radio transmission systems and modulated-carrier systems during the period from 2000 to 2001. However, recent convergences appeared between technologies regarding controlling lights and liquid crystal materials since 2008.

Utilization of the framework will suggest new business opportunities to SMEs in a business ecosystem by identifying the trends of technological convergences.

The purpose of this paper is to help people understand innovation and related policies in China over the past 25 years by using and analyzing patent data retrieved from State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People's Republic of China, at: http://www.sipo.gov. cn/sipo2008/tjxx/. Innovation in China attracts attention all over the world. The patent is considered as the fountain of innovation and is widely applied to measure innovation of a country or a region.

This study analyzed the trends of both patent filings and patent grants/registrations during 1985‐2009 and explored the ratio change between them by using data statistical method. Based on the statistically analysis, patent law and related policies were further analyzed. The paper also gives some suggestions on Chinese innovation policy.

The paper drew the following conclusions: both total patent filings and total patent grants/registration in SIPO appear to have an increase of exponential trends, especially during the years of 2005‐2009; patent filings and patent grants/registration in SIPO also appear to have an increase of exponential trends, but the gap between patent filings and patent grants/registration seems to be widening in recent years; the two revisions of Chinese patent law in the years 1992 and 2000 have had some positive impacts on patent filings and patent grants/registration to some degree; the ratios of patent filings to total patent filings and patent grants/registration to total patent grants/registration in SIPO during the years of 1985‐2009 are comparatively lower by 31.60 percent and 16.37 percent; and Japan and USA are the two leading countries in terms of non‐resident patent grants/registration in SIPO.

This study is still macroscopic, more detailed analysis should be done in future studies.

This study takes an overall view of innovation in China in the past 25 years by analyzing patent data and related law and policies. It proposes related institutions perfection, which will enhance innovation development in China.

Research on innovation in China via patentometrics has not been found thus far using all patent data during the period of 1985‐2009 in SIPO.

Apple is a representative company of technological innovation (TI) and management. It has launched new and innovative products since 1977, and many companies and business schools around the world have attempted to learn about the success story of Apple's innovation. However, most previous research works on Apple's innovation have been based on qualitative approaches such as experts' opinions. Such studies offer a subjective point of view. By contrast, in this paper the authors aim to study the TI and forecasting of Apple by analyzing its patent applications, which is an objective approach to examining the innovation of Apple from a technological perspective.

TI is an important issue concerning technology management for companies and governments. To examine Apple's TI, the authors analyze all applied patents and construct analytical models according to three approaches. First, they build statistical models using the time series regression and multiple linear regression methods to create a technology map. Second, they cluster all Apple's patents to find its vacant technology domain. Lastly, they use social network analysis to search for technologies central to Apple's future.

The authors' study shows the technological trends and relations between Apple's technologies. This research finds vacant technology areas and central technologies for Apple's TI.

Using statistical and machine learning methods, the authors analyze all Apple's patents in order to predict the firm's future technologies. This research contributes to examining the TI of Apple. Therefore, the results of the patent analysis can highlight the technological opportunities for Apple's TI.

Traditional TI models have been based on qualitative methods. Previous investigations of Apple's TI have also relied on traditional analytical approaches. In this paper, however, the authors develop a quantitative and objective approach for examining Apple's TI.