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This chapter provides evidence on how young technology startups are employing intellectual property (IP) protection when innovating and competing in the United States. Although researchers and teachers of university technology transfer often think only in terms of patents and the Bayh-Dole Act, this chapter suggests that adopting a more nuanced view of IP rights is appropriate. After reviewing the primary non-patent types of IP protection available in the U.S. (copyright, trademark, and trade secret), we explain that while patents are often considered the strongest protection, for some entrepreneurs – particularly those operating in the U.S. software and Internet sectors – patents may be the least important means of capturing value from innovation. We present evidence from the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey to demonstrate that IP is used by U.S. startups in very different ways, and to different effects, across technology sectors and other company-specific characteristics. Contrary to the common assumption in academic discourse, we show that different forms of IP protection often serve as complements, rather than substitutes.

An emerging stream of literature has observed that project-based organizations rely increasingly on a network of collaborations originating from the ongoing process of creating and dissolving relationships that bring new project opportunities. Project-based networks are widespread in knowledge-intensive and creative industries, such as life-science and biotechnology, nanotechnology, and software, film, and music industry. This chapter examines the structural characteristics of project-based network-ties in German biotech. We focus on the consequences of local versus international network ties for the innovative success of German biotechnology firms. The findings of our longitudinal event history analysis indicate that the most valuable learning drivers are international research alliances and centrality within the international research network. Surprisingly, we do not find any local effects: neither the density of a local research cluster, nor its diversity or age is of significance. Our results shed new light on the relevance of international linkages for firms that are engaged in project-based learning networks.

Concerning the general patent trading mechanism, this paper proposes a systematic patent appraisal model to provide patent transferors and transferees a reasonable price suggestion of the target patent.

Based on the appraisal factors (including the patent transferor, patent transferee, patent features, and patent trading specifications) and regression model, a patent trading system is developed with an automatic patent appraisal function.

Based on the case study, it is found that the system performance is better if the non‐critical factors can be identified and dropped out from the appraisal model.

The proposed model and platform can enhance patent trading performance and, therefore, the enterprise R&D tasks can be accomplished more efficiently.

This study proposes quantitative models of patent appraisal factors and a multiple regression model for patent appraisal to present an automatic patent price determination mechanism.

In this paper we explore the degree to which patents are representative of the magnitude, direction, and impact of the knowledge spilling out of the university by focusing on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and in particular, on the departments of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, we show that patenting is a minority activity: a majority of the faculty members in our sample never patent, and publication rates far outstrip patenting rates. Most faculty members estimate that patents account for less than 10% of the knowledge that transfers from their labs. Our results also suggest that in two important ways patenting is not representative of the patterns of knowledge generation and transfer from MIT: patent volume does not predict publication volume, and those firms that cite MIT papers are in general not the same firms as those that cite MIT patents. However, patent volume is positively correlated with paper citations, suggesting that patent counts may be reasonable measures of research impact. We close by speculating on the implications of our results for the difficult but important question of whether, in this setting, patenting acts as a substitute or a complement to the process of fundamental research.

The purpose of this paper is to study the internationalization of technology development in India. The internationalization of research and development (R&D) has not been a recent phenomenon. Large multinational companies increased their R&D investment in various host countries during the past years. While the US and the countries in Western Europe have been the traditional locus of R&D, China and India have emerged lately as the destinations for R&D. The changes in geopolitical systems of trade and intellectual property protection couples with the advances in information and communication technology have helped globalize the R&D activities.

The study has used the US patents as a surrogate measure for the technical output from India. The data include all US patents granted between 1992 and 2007 in which at least one inventor was an Indian resident. Studies in the field of economics of technology and in science policy have used patents as a valid measure of R&D output.

The results of this study indicated that there were three phases of technological development in India. Intensity of patenting, role of the different institutions in technology development, and the focus of technology characterize each phase. By examining the co‐inventors, the authors see how the international cooperation among scientists has shaped. While government laboratories under the aegis of the council of scientific and industrial research had a high number of patents, their role has gone through significant shifts among the three phases. The authors also find that the multinational companies from the US have driven the recent growth in Indian patenting and are using more of all‐Indian teams for patentable research. This indicates maturation the skills of technical personnel in India in terms of developing patentable technology. The study also points out the fact that despite the growth of the Indian corporations in the IT sector, they lack in building their own intellectual property. If India wants to maintain the momentum of growth in corporate R&D, it faces the challenge of upgrading its higher education in producing technical graduates at masters and doctoral levels.

Limitations of the study include the validity of patents as the sole measure of innovation and technology development. The process of obtaining patents in the US is expensive and it may deter some organizations to pursue it. Other methods to obtain data on innovative activities may be necessary to validate the findings reported here.

The study provides a rich source of information about the growth of technological fields in India and the challenges that it faces in building its global competitiveness.

The study should be useful in identifying the sectors where India has developed strengths and the areas where it needs to improve. Also, by examining the ownership pattern of the intellectual property in these sectors, one can postulate the technological independence of Indian organizations.

Smart manufacturing can lead to disruptive changes in production technologies and business models in the manufacturing industry. This paper aims to identify technological topics in smart manufacturing by using patent data, investigating technological trends and exploring potential opportunities.

The latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling technique was used to extract latent technological topics, and the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) was used to analyze the relative emergence levels of the topics. Topic value and topic competitive analyses were developed to evaluate each topic's potential value and identify technological positions of competing firms, respectively.

A total of 14 topics were extracted from the collected patent data and several fast growth and high-value topics were identified, such as smart connection, cyber-physical systems (CPSs), manufacturing data analytics and powder bed fusion additive manufacturing. Several leading firms apply broad R&D emphasis across a variety of technological topics, while others focus on a few technological topics.

The developed methodology can help firms identify important technological topics in smart manufacturing for making their R&D investment decisions. Firms can select appropriate technology strategies depending on the topic's emergence position in the topic strategy matrix.

Previous research studies have not analyzed the maturity levels of technological topics. The topic-based patent analytics approach can complement previous studies. In addition, this study provides a multi-valuation framework for exploring technological opportunities, thus providing valuable information that supports a more robust understanding of the technology landscape of smart manufacturing.

The role of patents for appropriating (capturing) value from innovation investments has for decades been of major interest to both practitioners and academics in innovation management. Many studies have implicitly assumed that firms appropriate value through in-house creation and marketing of innovative products and services, and that the main function of patents is to protect the exclusive sales in product and service markets. We challenge this assumption in light of the variety of business models, strategies and markets now being available, including different organizational and market forms of open innovation.

A conceptual framework and typology of open innovation markets is developed, and the role of patents for appropriation is investigated in these markets among 172 Swedish technology-based firms.

The results show that the importance of patents has a skewed distribution with some firms rating patents very important and with a fat tail of firms rating patents less important. Most importantly, the results indicate that patents are enabling exchange and technology trade in various types of open innovation markets rather than only supporting vertically integrated business models. Thus patents were found to help rather than hinder the use of open innovation markets.

The paper makes two main contributions. First a theoretical reinterpretation of open innovation with a conceptualization of open innovation markets for appropriation of innovation values. Second an empirical illustration of new roles of patents for appropriating innovation values in these markets. The paper in addition illustrates the use of a counterfactual approach to questionnaire surveys, as well as the complementarities between patents and other means of appropriation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how new technology-based firms’ (NTBF) business and innovation resources affect firm survival.

The study leverages a data set comprised of 131 Swedish NTBFs located in 16 incubators. The first part of the analysis investigates the determinants of firm survival, and the second presents a statistical analysis. The business resources examined in this study consist of business planning and localization variables and four latent variables are developed. Patents at the firm start or during the firm’s first three years are considered as innovation resources.

First, this study shows that the latent business plans variable has a significant positive connection with firm survival. Second, patent development during firms’ initial years is critical to firm survival.

This study is longitudinal, with the first data collection occurring in 2005 and the second in 2014. The firms’ 2013 annual reports suggest that the firms’ survival rate is 55 percent. This longitudinal research that spans eight years shows how the development of patents is highly significant to firm survival.

This study aims to find technologically important patent identification methods and indicators early and efficiently to grasp the technical qualitative level of patents, which are output indicators of research and development (R&D) results.

This paper reports on two methods for distinguishing important patents and the indicators obtained from those methods. One of the discrimination methods is Heckman's two-step estimation procedure. The second method is to find the centrality of each patent by network analysis of the citation relationship between publications and to find the importance from the magnitude of the centrality value.

In Heckman's analysis, the number of citations within three years after publication and the applicant's right acquisition/maintenance motivation index had positive effects on patent importance. The discriminative indicators of important patents by network analysis were degree centrality, mediation centrality, proximity centrality and transit values in the aggregated subnetworks. These two analytical methods are in a relationship that can complement each other's shortcomings. To efficiently evaluate the qualitative importance of patents, it is recommended to use these two methods together.

The indicators of important technical patents might change depending on the technical field. Future studies can apply this research to multiple technical fields to improve robustness and to construct an algorithm that can efficiently evaluate the quality of patents.

This study's results can be useful for grasping the patent position of the company or competitors numerically and for quantitatively evaluating the quality of R&D activities. Furthermore, it is possible to streamline the routine for an exploratory search of a huge number of patents. For example, it could be useful for detecting changes in the paradigm of specific technical knowledge, evolving the genealogy of technical knowledge and creating patent maps for new R&D. These methods greatly increase the effectiveness of technical knowledge information, which is the basis of R&D. In addition, the results of this study can help in evaluating patented assets.

This study confirmed the development process of technical knowledge. It is a fact that sharing, sympathy and mutual trust for technical issues and technical values are created among professional engineers and researchers inside and outside the organization, and their preferences and interactions develop and expand technical knowledge. Understanding the process of development and the evolution of this technical knowledge gives hints, such as expanding the discretionary power of engineers and researchers regarding corporate secrets, or reviewing the balance between control and independence, to solve Japanese management problems, which are often closed and monetized in R&D activities.

This study presents a scoring of the technical significance of patents by combining the two analytical methods. In addition, there are proposals as a method for detecting changes in the genealogy and paradigm of technical knowledge. As an analysis method, it is a new proposal that has never existed before.

Scientific knowledge has characteristics of a pure public good. It is non-rivalrous in the sense that once generated, it is neither depleted nor diminished by use. Knowledge is also non-excludable since, once it is made available, in the absence of clearly defined property rights, users cannot be excluded from using it. These aspects imply that private market mechanisms will not provide adequate incentives for knowledge creation. Legal property rights, such as patents, are one means of dealing with this problem. Patronage in the form of government support for research provides another solution, as does the priority system of awarding credit for scientific discoveries to the first to find them. In the last two decades, there has been a growth in the relative importance of the use of legal property rights in the university setting and with it a growing controversy as to whether the costs may be outweighing the benefits. In this chapter, we discuss issues and evidence with regard to the ownership and licensing of publicly funded research intellectual property rights (IPR). We begin with an overview of incentives created by the patent system and discuss the ways in which these incentives differ from traditional norms of science. We then draw on the legal and economic literatures which distinguish among the incentives to invent, disclose, and innovate, and argue that the rationale for providing IPR for university research stems from the last of these. Finally, we discuss the available evidence on the creation and diffusion of academic research under current IPR regimes.