Patent management: the prominent role of strategy and organization

PurposeThe 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.Design/methodology/approachThe 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.FindingsThe 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.Originality/valueThis 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.

When Do Firms Trade Patents?

Drawing on the Coase theorem, we consider a firm’s decision to transfer patent ownership to another firm in the markets for innovation. We deem that the proximity of a patent’s technology structure to that of a firm’s patent portfolio will generally result in greater marginal productivity of the patent, leading to enhanced prospects for the firm’s economic return. We thus predict that firms are more likely to trade patents when the technology structure of a patent is closer to the technology stock of a potential buyer compared with that of its original assignee. However, such a relationship will be weaker when a potential buyer and the original assignee have greater product-market overlap or when the assignee has superior technological capability. We test these predictions by employing a dyad-level analysis of transactional decisions during the 1987–2016 period on 40,110 U.S. patents assigned to 57 major biopharmaceutical firms. Our study provides novel insights on factors that facilitate or inhibit patent trade in the markets for innovation.

The Impact of Patent Portfolio on Competitive Landscape of Digital Signage Apparatus

The digital signage market has been flourishing every year, and this situation opens up new commercialization opportunities for stakeholders related to the acceleration function. The modern world has allowed technological innovation to satisfy market demands, primarily based on portfolio of patent information. The digital signage apparatus became an economical solution for the costly technology in the digital era. The purpose of this paper was to find the impact of the competitive landscape on the digital signage apparatus towards e-commerce development based on a patent portfolio from the WIPO database. The research was performed based on the patent information using Innograph software and information related to digital signage apparatus resulting in a total of 146 registered patents and 40 patents matching the research subjects. The results revealed that the patent portfolio on the digital signage apparatus has high perceived usefulness, but only few industries used this as a reference in benchmarking their technological competitiveness. This paper is beneficial to the industry that seeks for the impact of the latest technological implementation amidst the competitive commercialization of the digital signage apparatus. Keywords: Competitive Landscape; Digital Signage Apparatus; Impact; Patent Portfolio.