The Market for Technology

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.

Entertainment Spending and Capturing Value from Innovation in Chinese Firms

This study examines how Chinese firms capture value from their innovations. We propose that relationship-building through business entertainment may be helpful. In particular, wining and dining key stakeholders, including clients, suppliers, distributors, and government officials, can help firms gain access to complementary resources necessary for commercializing their innovations, facilitating capturing value from innovations. However, business entertainment is less effective in regions with relatively developed market-supporting institutions, including factor markets and legal institutions. The analysis results of archival data and data from a World Bank survey of Chinese firms support all the above arguments.

OPEN INNOVATION GROUNDWORK

Although the concept of open innovation has gained much attention in the field of innovation management, few studies have so far theorized how such initiatives are being enacted in practice. This study is based on an inductive empirical analysis of how AstraZeneca, a large biopharmaceutical corporation, implemented an open innovation initiative called BioVentureHub. In the paper we introduce a theoretical model of open innovation enactment based on four interrelated processes. Three of these processes — conceptualization, mobilization, and operationalization — include activities related to preparing for open innovation, what we call open innovation groundwork. The fourth process — facilitation — involves translating the groundwork into actual open innovation.

The study contributes to the broader open innovation domain by its detailed account and theorizing of how open innovation is established in practice. Our methodological approach complements the previous research on open innovation that mostly are based on retrospective accounts or are conceptual in nature. Moreover, the study contributes by illustrating a novel initiative from the life science industry, where open innovation is frequently discussed but where still only a few empirical examples are found in academic literature

Technology transfer in prescription drug market

Purpose

Many people in developing countries are suffering from serious diseases, such as HIV and tuberculosis. On the other hand, drug patents impact the availability of the drug for patients. Pharmaceutical technology transfer is widely used by domestic and foreign pharmaceutical enterprises because it promotes the availability of the drug for patients. The purpose of this paper, which is on drug technology transfer, is mainly to discuss how to solve the conflict between drug patent protection and public health from the perspective of the law, but not from the perspective of economics. To fill this gap, the authors introduce a model in the prescription drug market and analyze how a foreign manufacturer that produces brand name drugs authorizes a domestic enterprise that produces common drugs.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors consider a situation that if the patent holders are provided a certain amount of compensation, then whether compulsory licensing would be an effective tool to promote competition and improve the availability of drugs. Furthermore, they also consider three different cooperation mechanisms, namely, fixed-fee contract, royalty contract and two-part tariff contract, under the case of technology transfer and give the condition of which contract would be better under different scenarios.

Findings

It is found that the product differentiation and the agent behavior of doctor in the domestic market have a deep impact on the foreign enterprise’s decision on technology transfer. If both fixed-fee contract and royalty contract are permitted, foreign enterprise will choose different transfer contracts under different conditions. Under two-part tariff contract, it is equivalent to a fixed-fee or royalty contract under certain conditions. Furthermore, all contracts can improve patients’ benefits, while the royalty contract and the two-part tariff contract would reduce importer’s social welfare under certain conditions.

Originality/value

Prescription drugs can treat many acute diseases and improve people’s quality of life. On the other hand, it requires investment in pharmaceutical research and development and is hard to afford the drug for the people living in poverty. This paper tries to solve the problem by introducing three cooperation contracts. The authors consider an innovative drug company and a regular drug company. The regular drug company can improve the quality of its drug by signing a technology transfer agreement with the innovative company. Three contracts are discussed in this paper; they are fixed-fee contract, royalty contract and two-part tariff contract. The authors examine the impact of different contracts on the companies’ profit, patients’ benefit and social welfare. It is found that quality differentiation of drugs and doctor behaviors can have large impacts on the company’s decision about technology adoption as well as contract choice strategies. In all of the three contracts, patients’ benefit improves, while the profit of the two companies and social welfare can increase or decrease under different contracts.