Patent Protection, Complementary Assets, and Firms Incentives for Technology Licensing

  • Authors:

  • Ashish Arora;Marco Ceccagnoli

  • Affiliations:

  • H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213;College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, 800 West Peachtree Street, NW, Atlanta, Georgia 30308

  • Venue:
  • Management Science
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationship between technology licensing and the effectiveness of patent protection. Using the 1994 Carnegie Mellon survey on industrial research and development (R&D) in the United States, we develop and test a simple structural model in which the patenting and licensing decisions are jointly determined. We find that increases in the effectiveness of patent protection increases licensing propensity, but only when the firm lacks specialized complementary assets required to commercialize new technologies. In contrast, for firms with specialized complementary assets, increases in patent effectiveness increase patenting propensity but reduce the propensity to license. We present systematic cross-industry empirical support for the proposition that intellectual property protection is a key determinant of the vertical boundaries of the firm and the market for technology but that its impact is mediated by a firms ownership of specialized complementary assets.