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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.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the patent planning and patent evaluation processes might be redesigned for firms intending to move from a mere accumulation of patents to a more thoughtful patent management approach that couples protection with the reduction of cost related to patent file and maintenance.

An Action Research project was carried out in close collaboration with a firm. This approach was adopted since it allows generation of new scientific knowledge from the observation and direct intervention on a specific situation.

Results underline the importance of structuring and formalising the patent planning and patent evaluation processes within the firm. Moreover, it is suggested that the patent planning process should be integrated into the development of a new product/technology since its initial phases.

The paper contributes to filling the gap regarding the practical implementation and improvement of patent planning and patent evaluation processes, coupling protection with the minimisation of costs related to patent file and maintenance. However, as the results of Action Research studies are specific to the context where they took place, result generalisability is limited.

This paper provides managers with a valuable example on how to structure the patent planning and patent evaluation processes. The introduction of specific analyses into these processes allows limiting the decision-making subjectivity and, consequently, enhances the accuracy of firm investment in filing and maintaining its patents.

Providing a practical example of the actual implementation and improvement of the patent planning and patent evaluation processes, this paper responds to the recent call for more qualitative studies on intellectual property management.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how multinational enterprises have historically managed global patenting and to what extent the localization of patent management has supported the expansion of these enterprises. This study focuses on the electric appliance industry (one of the first industries to see the emergence of global companies) and consider the case of Siemens, a German multinational company, comparing it to General Electric (GE), an American company.

The work adopts a global business history approach. Taking GE’s global patent-management model, described by Nishimura (2004, 2009, 2016), as the benchmark, this study analyzed Siemens’ worldwide control of its intellectual property rights between 1890 and Second World War, using German, Japanese and American primary sources.

Patent management is a common means for firms to globalize and transfer technology internationally, but it can take various forms. While GE transferred patent management to its foreign subsidiaries (a process known as localization), Siemens kept worldwide patent management at its headquarters – except in Japan, where in time it transferred this activity to a joint venture. The transfer of production called for localization of patent management while focusing on exporting to other markets made it possible to keep patent management at headquarters.

Patents are usually a source for quantitative surveys. This paper uses them to discuss how multinational companies manage property rights globally. It is the first paper to address this issue by comparing two major actors in a similar industry.

Given the changing role of patents within enterprises, this research aims to investigate the link between patent management and technological innovation performance in Chinese high‐tech enterprises. Also, from theoretical underpinnings this study highlights the managerial implications of effective patent management which will lead to enhanced technological innovation performance.

Hypotheses related to patent management and technological innovation performance in Chinese high‐tech enterprises have been developed based on a review of the literature and related field interviews. Data has been collected from 118 high‐tech enterprises using questionnaires and analyzed using regression and SEM analysis.

Patent acquisition has a positive impact on both protection and commercialization of patents. Considered together, the combination of patent acquisition and commercialization has a positive impact on technological innovation performance in high‐tech enterprises. While patent protection positively affects patent commercialization, it has no direct effect on economic or societal performance. Therefore, the key factors to enhance the link between patent management and technological innovation performance of Chinese high‐tech enterprises are effective patent acquisition and subsequent commercialization.

From a resource‐based view, this paper delineates the concept of patent management and validates the link between patent management and technological innovation performance. To the authors' knowledge, it is a relatively new perspective to explore patent management based on a micro‐level.

The purpose of this article is twofold; to verify the existence of different profiles of firms based on the level of sophistication of their patent management core processes and to test the impact of the interplay between two patent management supporting dimensions, namely patent strategy and organization for patenting, on the level of sophistication of patent management core processes.

The method consists of a survey study, collecting data from a set of European patent management professionals. These data are analyzed with factor analysis, cluster analysis and regression analysis to test several hypotheses.

The results show that patent strategy positively and significantly impacts patent management sophistication, and that the patent organization positively moderates this relationship. In other words, a patent strategy, supported by a well-developed patent organization and culture, will positively influence the processes of managing a firm's patent portfolio.

This study is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first one to provide quantitative evidence that supports the notion that it is important to take a strategic and organizational perspective of patent management.

Extant research and practice of patent management are often occupied with how to best utilize patenting as a source of competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a patent management trichotomy where firms make strategic decisions between patenting, publishing, and secrecy.

The paper is conceptual in nature and draws on received IP management literature to develop an analytical framework.

The authors suggest that the choice between patenting, publishing, and secrecy can be understood in terms of differences in the degree to which the firm can appropriate value from the invention and the degree to which it can operate freely.

Through an analysis along the dimensions of direct and indirect appropriation as well as static and dynamic freedom to operate, the paper conceptualizes the choice between patenting, publishing, and secrecy in a way useful for managers as well as for academics.

The evolution of technology has become the mainstream of the current technological innovation era. Technological change is organized in its unique pattern and a new approach that takes place in a systematic and selective manner. Such change is generally molded with the amalgamation of various factors, namely, economic, social or scientific and technological. This paper aims to focus on identifying technological trajectories in a technological ecosystem with the case of m-payment technology.

This study constructs a patent citation network for mobile payment service technology through patent citation data and identifies the main evolution process using the main path analysis of the network. The scope of this study focuses on key innovation using social network analysis and patent citation network, validated using the case of a mobile payment system and analyzing its technological trajectory.

Analyzing technology evolution provides a greater insight of the overall technology landscape to the researcher and practitioner. Analyzing the m-payment technology landscape gives three main categories of m-payment systems: the mobile financial transaction system), the payee mobile device payment selection system and e-wallet services.

The novelty of this research lies in the process of identifying technological evolution using social network and patent citation network analysis. The case of m-payment technology ecosystem is studied quantitatively which is not explored by previous researchers. This research provides a way to develop the main path technology of innovative products or services to identify technology evolution using the case of m-payment landscape.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how a patent is an intangible asset and how it creates value.

Through analysis of a set of cases, the paper analyses how a patent becomes related to a series of other elements. This approach investigates the details of how a patent becomes useful. Theoretically, the paper suggests that a patent only creates value from being entangled in a web of resources in action, contrasting this with patents on hold where they are described as entities but not as resources.

The paper shows that patens a valuable not by themselves (on hold) but by being linked to a series of other resources and purposes (in actions). To understand the value of the patent is to understand its relationships to other mechanism in production, marketing and finance.

The paper sets out an approach to study the value of patents which looks at the network around the patent. This is a limitation inasmuch as it is difficult to generalise the particular findings, but as a prospective research strategy, its strength is that is allows insight into the complexities of making patents valuable. This can also add to statistical work on the contingencies for patents' value.

The paper suggests that a strategy for patenting must pay attention to the different kinds of resources that make it useful. Often it is necessary to look far beyond the patent office to gain this knowledge. The management agenda is clear: the patent has to be entangled, but this also raises questions, because since the patent is an option, some of its value derives from exploring its possibilities. This however, blocks for its exploitation and thus causes opportunity costs. From a management point of view, it is not always clear that a patent should be used for its maximum potentiality, because this would disrupt the network is it part of and make it a very expensive resource to mobilise towards innovation

Typically, research on patents has taken the route via statistical and economic analysis. Our paper adds by showing the dynamics of managerial uses of patents and it shows that the structural conditioning of use of patents can fruitfully be supplemented by process and network approaches to their use.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an objective method for technology forecasting (TF). For the construction of the proposed model, the paper aims to consider new approaches to patent mapping and clustering. In addition, the paper aims to introduce a matrix map and K‐medoids clustering based on support vector clustering (KM‐SVC) for vacant TF.

TF is an important research and development (R&D) policy issue for both companies and government. Vacant TF is one of the key technological planning methods for improving the competitive power of firms and governments. In general, a forecasting process is facilitated subjectively based on the researcher's knowledge, resulting in unstable TF performance. In this paper, the authors forecast the vacant technology areas in a given technology field by analyzing patent documents and employing the proposed matrix map and KM‐SVC to forecast vacant technology areas in the management of technology (MOT).

The paper examines the vacant technology areas for MOT patent documents from the USA, Europe, and China by comparing these countries in terms of technology trends in MOT and identifying the vacant technology areas by country. The matrix map provides broad vacant technology areas, whereas KM‐SVC provides more specific vacant technology areas. Thus, the paper identifies the vacant technology areas of a given technology field by using the results for both the matrix map and KM‐SVC.

The authors use patent documents as objective data to develop a model for vacant TF. The paper attempts to objectively forecast the vacant technology areas in a given technology field. To verify the performance of the matrix map and KM‐SVC, the authors conduct an experiment using patent documents related to MOT (the given technology field in this paper). The results suggest that the proposed forecasting model can be applied to diverse technology fields, including R&D management, technology marketing, and intellectual property management.

Most TF models are based on qualitative and subjective methods such as Delphi. That is, there are few objective models. In this regard, this paper proposes a quantitative and objective TF model that employs patent documents as objective data and a matrix map and KM‐SVC as quantitative methods.