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This chapter proposes a survey of the main results produced by the literature on licensing and some original insights, with a particular focus on globalization, North–South models of technology transfer, the issue of how the intellectual property rights influences international licensing, and asymmetric information.

What are the conditions that influence the decision of a patentee to start a new venture? Does the possession of a patent make the individual more likely to engage in the entrepreneurial process? Does the possibility of a provisional monopoly limit the danger and the uncertainty in the decision‐making for commercial exploitation of an idea? Literature has given some light on the decision of individual patentees to establish a new venture but either these studies examine a specific group of patentees or cover national patentees’ population without distinguishing between individual and firm patentees. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to literature which aims at the detection of factors affecting the decision of individual patentees to start a new business using data from a national survey on the population of individual patentees in a less technologically developed country.

This paper uses the responses of 434 individuals‐inventors, residents of Greece, from a broader survey conducted by the Greek Organization for Industrial Property in March 2007. Applying the collected data into a logit model, the paper addresses the questions raised in the literature about the source of knowledge, opportunities perception, and the past business experience on the decision of a patentee to start a new business venture.

The findings of the paper show that financial restraints strongly affect the decision of a patentee to start‐up a new venture. The collaboration with a higher education and research institution does not lead to an invention‐patent with technological opportunity content and this reflects the particularities of Greek academia while the opposite is the perception for the knowledge coming from market (incumbent firms). Finally, the new entrepreneur is more likely to decide to start a new venture in order to exploit commercially its patent rather than the patentee with past entrepreneurial experience. This finding contradicts the previous findings for the US and the authors believe that it may be a consequence of the Greek commercial and financial law and national culture idiosyncrasies.

The originality of the paper is due to the fact that for first time data from a survey of the patentees population is used. In addition, this is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, study for a less technologically advanced country. The findings of this paper have significant policy implications since it provides useful inputs for the design of the entrepreneurship policy.

Patent litigation consists of non-market actions that firms undertake to access intellectual property rights defined by prior legislation and enforced by the courts. Thus, patent litigation provides an interesting context in which to explore aspects of firm’s non-market strategies. In contrast with prior non-market strategy research that has largely focused on how political institutions define the rules of the game for market competition, non-market actions within patent litigation primarily seek to access and apply these broad policies to specific situations, products, or assets that matter to the firm. Furthermore, because such non-market actions are directly influenced by the firms’ market strategies, they represent a promising area for research on integrated (market and non-market) strategies as well.

The goal of this paper is to explain how generic patent strategies that firms use to support their competitive advantage in the product-market influence non-market outcomes related to the timing of patent litigation resolution. In contrast with prior research that has studied settlement in patent litigation essentially as a one-shot bargaining game, this paper seeks to explain litigation resolution as an outcome of the competing mechanisms of settlement and adjudication that operate continually during litigation. Using a large sample of patent litigations in research medicines and computers, I model the timing of patent litigation resolution in a proportional hazards framework, wherein settlement and adjudication are competing risks. The evidence found is consistent with the proposition that the speed with which patent litigation is resolved by either settlement or adjudication reflects the use of proprietary, defensive, and leveraging patent strategies by firms. These findings also help to explain unexpected and anomalous findings regarding the settlement of patent litigation reported in prior research.

Patent litigation has been rising rapidly in the United States since the mid-1980s, and particularly so in high-technology industries. The strategies pursued by firms with their patents have a significant influence on their decisions to file suit, and on the outcomes within litigation. The influence of strategic motivations on settlement outcomes is studied in two illustratively different industries – computers and research medicines. Evidence is found for two types of influences – the use of patents (as isolating mechanisms) to protect valuable strategic stakes, and their “defensive” role in obtaining access to external technologies (through mutual hold-up).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which developing countries could build national initiatives of compulsory licences.

The focus of this article is only on developing countries. The author reflects on the Indian patent jurisprudence regarding the operational relationship between the general principles applicable to working of patented inventions locally and the grant of compulsory licences. The discussion that follows is based on a review of the case: Bayer Corporation versus Natco Pharma with a view to presenting a model for developing countries to maintain that the public interest principle of patent law is well-founded in their domestic patent regimes.

The analysis confirms that failure to work locally continues to be abusive of the patent right under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, and remains a valid condition on which to grant a compulsory licence. Thus, this reverses the often-contrary misconception that has become almost a unanimous assumption that failure to work basis for granting compulsory licensing would violate Article 27(1) of TRIPS and its enforcement provisions on patent.

The author argues that as no member state has challenged the legality of Indian’s decision in the World Trade Organisation, under the dispute settlement understanding (DSU) system is more supportive of the contention that failure to work locally continues to be permissible under TRIPS and remains valid conditions on which member states can grant compulsory licences. This further adds weight to the understanding that nothing in the light of TRIPS would, in fact, preclude any possibility of developing countries amending their patent laws accordingly to maintain that the public interest principle underlining patent law is well-founded in their domestic patent regimes.

This study aims at developing a better understanding of the relationship between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability and further examines the moderating effect of open innovation.

This paper adopts hierarchical regressions to validate the theoretical model and collect the patent data of the top 54 firm patentees in the smartphone industry as empirical sample. Using patent citation network data, this paper estimates the relationship between open innovation, network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability.

This paper empirically shows that structural embeddedness exerts a negative effect on incremental innovation capability, while relational embeddedness is positively related to incremental innovation capability. And open innovation strengthens the relationship between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability.

This paper shifts the focus of the determinants of incremental innovation capability from internal factors to the external network features by exploring the linkage between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability. A counterintuitive conclusion is that structural embeddedness shows a negative effect on firm's incremental innovation capability. Furthermore, in contrast to most previous studies, which only focus on the direct effect of open innovation on the firm's incremental innovation capability, our study examines the moderating effect of open innovation on the relationships between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability. At last, the results provide practical guidance for firms to occupy the beneficial network positions and adopt appropriate open innovation strategies to improve their incremental innovation capability.

I begin with a dispute over a fox hunt, by which to understand the law of tangible property, then develop that metaphor for the major types of intellectual property. I start with domestic U.S. patent law for the sake of concreteness, and generalize to other jurisdictions and types of intellectual property. In the latter parts of the paper I discuss the international implications of intellectual property, including especially the effects of information spillovers. The last part of the paper describes the hazards in analogizing “trade” in intellectual property rights to trade in goods, and particularly in interpreting international patent data. These hazards motivate the search for a structural model specially adapted to the purpose of valuing international intellectual property rights and rules. The goal is to give economists a simple and integrated framework for analyzing intellectual property across time, jurisdiction and regime type, with an eye towards eventually developing other incentive systems that have the advantages of property (such as decentralized decision-making), but fewer of the disadvantages.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the development and knowledge flows of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) via the use of patent inventor database. Moreover, this study aims to explore patentees and inventors’ companies to help readers and practitioners to be able to understand the patentees, technology development and activities of knowledge flows from four countries. DSSCs, which are known as one of the key technologies of green energy, have been applied ever more widely to many different industries, and their use has quickly grown with a number of scientific publications and patent applications.

This paper was based on the US patent database collection of third-generation DSSCs in four typical countries such as USA, Japan, Germany and Taiwan to map the knowledge network of DSSC technology via the social network analysis method.

The knowledge network of 132 DSSC patents was explored. Among the four countries, Japan leads, with the main patent number being H01G009. This paper also indicates the knowledge flow situation of Japanese inventors of DSSCs. For example, patented inventors Wariishi and Koji (JP) served the Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. (JP) in 2002, and then in 2008, transferred to the Fuji Film Corporation (JP). This means that the knowledge of technology was transferred by people who moved to another company for a new job.

This study is based on US Patent and Trademark Office patent database to do exploration.

This study was expected to provide information for the industry, government and academia, so that they will understand the trajectory of the technology inventor, specialist cultivation and technology development in the DSSC industry.

This study provides useful information for the green energy industry, government and academia to understand the importance of the knowledge flows and future development of DSSC technology of the solar cell industry. Thereby, they can intensify industrial competence and innovation by externally collaborating in this field as well as to increase the industrial competence by reimbursing the funds from government and other research institutes.

This chapter examines the role of “continuations” (procedural revisions of patent applications) within software patents and overall patenting in the United States during 1987–1999. Our research represents the first effort of which we are aware to analyse data on continuations in software or any other patent class, and as such provides information on the effects of 1995 changes in the U.S. patent law intended to curb “submarine patenting.” Our analysis of all U.S. patents issued 1987–1999 shows that the use of continuations grew steadily in overall U.S. patenting through 1995, with particularly rapid growth in continuations in software patenting. Sharp reversals in these growth rates after 1995 suggest that changes in the U.S. patent law were effective. Continuations were used more intensively by packaged-software firms prior to the effective date of the 1995 changes in patent law than by other patentees, and both software and non-software patents subject to continuation tend to be more valuable.

Not a very exciting title, particularly that word patents, which conjures up documents often difficult to read and even more difficult to understand. There is really no need for a patent specification to be more obscure than any other well drafted technical description; unfortunately jargon has crept in mainly with the intention of being less restrictive and now much of it is due to what I regard as a rather lazy habit.