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The paper's aim is to build a model that predicts the optimum tactics for capitalizing on inventions within the context of competitive interaction among large firms. For patenting, the paper seeks to show how invention value and firm rivalry drive the tactics of competing, deterring competitors, retreating from markets, and cooperating. It also aims to explore the effects of the contingencies of patent bulking, technology complexity, spheres of influence, resource similarity, and complementary‐resource tacitness.

The work is conceptual.

The base model shows that patenting can be used to protect markets where there is high invention‐value and high rivalry. When both invention‐value and rivalry are low, the best tactic is to cooperate. When value is high and rivalry low, patenting can be used as a signaling and deterring mechanism, but when value is low and rivalry is high the best option is to let patents lapse and retreat from markets. The moderating effects of patent bulking, technology complexity, spheres of influence, resource similarity, and complementary‐resource tacitness affect rivalry and the amount of patenting that will be done.

The paper provides propositions for empirical testing that are predictive of firm performance, rivalry, and patent bulking. Despite the authors' attention to key contingencies, it is impossible to be completely comprehensive in addressing all contingencies.

The framework provides tactics for competing and, consequently, maximizing income and minimizing costs.

The work synthesizes extant thinking on patents and multipoint competition. While the base model should be valuable for managers, the overall work should be valuable for academics.

Understanding a technology’s patent landscape, including patent strategies, helps organizations position themselves regarding their innovation and provides insight about a technology’s future direction. This study aims to provide an overview of the blockchain technology patenting trends and outlines an exploratory framework of patenting strategies for blockchain.

A total of 3,234 registered patents are analyzed to determine the geographical distribution and identify key actors patenting around the globe. In addition, an empirical study consisting of multiple case studies in the form of ten in-depth interviews with owners/managers of organizations based in North America was conducted to understand organizations’ strategies for patenting the blockchain technology.

Several novel insights regarding the strategies are used for blockchain technology patenting. For example, the existence of strong anti-patent sentiment which results in a lack of patenting by start-up organizations or has led to a form of open source patenting strategy. Larger organizations appear to be patenting defensively, and small to medium organizations are primarily patenting to defend their competitive advantage.

Start-up organizations harboring anti-patent sentiment should consider the open-source patenting strategy to ensure that the collaborative innovation network can continue. They should also consider collaborating with other actors within the network to have a competitive position in the market.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to conduct an empirical study with organizations currently using the blockchain technology to understand patenting strategies used for blockchain.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to identify the factors that are capable of influencing the value of a technological asset that is exchanged in the context of a business transaction and, secondly, to identify the direction of the relationship between each factor and the technological asset value.

First of all, an in‐depth analysis of the available literature about the assessment of technological asset value was conducted. Then a panel study was organised, involving several intellectual property managers and consultants and senior practitioners working in the field of IP assessment. Finally, an illustrative case study was conducted.

The paper proposes a framework that encompasses the following classes of factors: asset related; firm related; context related; risk related; and transaction related. It is shown that these factors are capable of influencing the value of a technological asset that is exchanged in the context of a business transaction and the direction of their impact is indicated.

The paper is believed to be a useful instrument capable of supporting managers and appraisers who, in the context of a specific business transaction involving the exchange of a technological asset between the counterparts, are called to assess its value.

The value of a technological asset is typically estimated through monetary techniques (cost, income and market methods) that often turn out to be disappointing in practice. This is mainly due to their quantitative nature, that impedes them to appropriately take into account qualitative variables capable of affecting the value of the asset. This paper is the first attempt, to the best knowledge of the authors, that draws together these variables in a comprehensive form and suggests the direction of their impact on the asset value.

In the intellectual property (IP) and management literature, the question of how external patent attorneys impact patent filings has been understudied. The purpose of this paper is to advance this area of research by examining how the use of external patent attorneys influences the patent filing strategies of firms and what impact firms’ level of experience with the exclusive use of in-house resources has on filing strategies. This study, thus, provides insights into the strategic dimension behind patent filing, a process which is affected by patent attorneys’ work and decision-making processes.

The econometric analysis is based on a patent database of 922,553 patents which is combined with an EPO patent database covering applications from 1990 to 2010. The authors test the hypotheses for this study using patent indicators addressing the impact of in-house firm experience vs the use of external patent attorneys on firm’s filing strategy.

This research finds empirical evidence that external patent attorneys’ work has an effect on patent scope, international scope, and patenting speed. Moreover, it can be shown that external patent attorneys have a positive impact on most filing dimensions, such as patent scope, international scope and the Patent Cooperation Treaty option, whereas the level of in-house firm experience has a negative impact on most filing dimensions. This implies that external patent attorneys seem to pursue a “maximization approach” while experienced firms seem to pursue a more differentiated approach to filing patents, for instance, drafting narrower and more focused patents.

The study suggests that effective filing strategies require an integrated approach between diverse IP stakeholders. More particularly, filing strategies should be communicated and aligned between all actors, including external patent attorneys in order to achieve the targeted patenting output.

The current study develops a patent filing typology, which accounts for patent attorneys’ decision options. In providing insights into patent attorneys’ work and their impacts on intellectual property rights management, the study is a useful complement to prior research, which has predominantly focused on applicants or examiners.

As a resource input in enterprise technological innovation, patents play an important role in influencing innovation performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of fuzzy front end (FFE) patent management on innovation performance, and the mediating role of patent commercialization and the moderating effect of technological lock-in.

This paper adopts a questionnaire survey from a sample of 203 high-tech Chinese enterprises across multiple industries. Structural equation modeling and the hierarchical regression method were used to test the hypothesis.

The results show that the FFE of patent management, namely, patent acquisition and patent protection, positively affect innovation performance. Specifically, patent commercialization mediates the relationship between FFE patent management and innovation performance. Moreover, technological lock-in moderates the relationship between patent management and innovation performance.

This study puts forward suggestions relating to institution innovation and mechanism innovation for effective patent management in firms, and provides some guidelines for firms to efficiently utilize patents to improve innovation performance.

This paper provides certain empirical evidence for the study of organizational structure, strategic management, and knowledge governance. As the main participators in technology innovation, high-tech enterprises should utilize both inside and outside resources to acquire patents.

“Deep in all of us”, wrote a Homes and gardens sub‐editor in April 1965, headlining Elspeth Huxley's article A cottage on a hillside, “is a craving for a quiet country retreat, old, mellow and secluded.” If true, this had clearly been true of England at least for a very long while. “Of late there has been a positive spate of books about living in the country”, wrote Philip Gosse in 1935. “The rustic life is all the rage.” “The cult of the country cottage”, declared J. Gordon Allen in 1912, “which was thought a few years ago to be merely a passing whim, has recently developed apace”. The manner in which a sizeable proportion of the English middle class were persuaded over several decades to forsake or at least to contemplate forsaking urban living is of some interest to, amongst others, sociologists and social historians. Since we are concerned here with the bibliographical aspects of this radical shift of attitudes, it would be as well to dispose at the outset of one possible analysis: namely the idea that literary precedents had much to do with this. Agreed, masters of urban living much earlier than the English—the Romans—invented apparently the away‐from‐it‐all stance: Horace, generals returning to the plough with Rome saved, the Georgics. Agreed also, their Augustan imitators had much to say about places in the country. But consider Wootton's

In this article, the ideas and methods behind the “patent-paper citation” are scrutinised by following the intellectual and technical development of approaches and ideas in early work on patentometrics. The aim is to study how references from patents to papers came to play a crucial role in establishing a link between science and technology.

The study comprises a conceptual history of the “patent paper citation” and its emergence as an important indicator of science and technology interaction. By tracing key references in the field, it analyses the overarching frameworks and ideas, the conceptual “hinterland”, in which the approach of studying patent references emerged.

The analysis explains how interest in patents – not only as legal and economic artefacts but also as scientific documents – became evident in the 1980s. The focus on patent citations was sparked by a need for relevant and objective indicators and by the greater availability of databases and methods. Yet, the development of patentometrics also relied on earlier research, and established theories, on the relation between science and technology.

This is the first attempt at situating patentometrics in a larger societal and scientific context. The paper offers a reflexive and nuanced analysis of the “patent-paper citation” as a theoretical and historical construct, and it calls for a broader and contextualised understanding of patent references, including their social, legal and rhetorical function.

This article reviews emergent global trends in intellectual property protection and identifies patenting as a strategic initiative. Recent developments in software and method‐of‐doing‐business patenting are fast transforming the e‐business landscape. The article discusses the emergent global regulatory framework concerning intellectual property rights and the strategic value of patenting. Important features of a corporate patenting portfolio are described.

One of the common law duties owed by the employer is his duty to take reasonable care for the safety of his employee. This common law duty is an implied term in the contract of employment and is therefore contractual in nature. Because of the difficulties which may arise in bringing an action in contract for breach of the employer's duty of care, the employee who has sustained injuries during the course of his employment (although he may sue either in contract of tort will normally bring a tort action.

Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are becoming increasingly popular among hobbyists, and with this popularity there comes the risk of runway incursion between a commercial aircraft and sUAS around airports. To keep airports safe and secure, the purpose of this paper is to propose a module, called the Airport Secure Perimeter Control System, that can be attached to every hobbyist’s sUAS for the purpose of notification and prevention.

Upon startup, the module connects to a database containing the central coordinates of every airport in the USA. A five-mile critical radius plus an additional one-mile buffer region is established around each point. The buffer region is created in order to inform the user that he/she is approaching a safe airspace and needs to take corrective action. Once the five-mile zone has been breached, autopilot software takes over the manual controls, and the sUAS is landed in a controlled manner, while the user still has lateral control of the vehicle in order to avoid any potential hazards below it. Then, both operator and airport receive messages about the event.

To demonstrate the proposed design, a prototype was developed that successfully implemented this system, and was formally tested within a controlled environment.

This solution would drastically reduce the security threat of sUAS breaching the critical regions surrounding airports, and its implementation is relatively simple.