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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004Patents as a Currency in the external Technology Market.For those readers of my blog who are able to read texts in German I would like to give an indication of a study published in December 2003 by members of the Fraunhofer Institut für Systemtechnik und Innovationsforschung under the title "Erfindungen kontra Patente - Schwerpunktstudie zur technologischen Leistungsfähigkeit Deutschlands". According to the English executive summary given therein, the starting point of the analysis is the apparent discrepancy between the rather modest increase in R&D expenditure of German industry and the doubling of the German patent applications in the 1990s. The objective was threefold: First, on the basis of a patent database analysis the study sought to analyse in depth the structure of the German industrial patentees and their patenting behaviour. Second, the study tried to reveal the driving forces for the increase in patenting in the 1990s. Accepting that some efficiency gains in corporate R&D have contributed to a growth in patenting, the major hypothesis was that the motives to file for a patent application have broadened and shifted in meaning. A third purpose of the investigation was to determine the consequences such a potential shift might have for the usage of patents as an indicator for R&D activities and technological performance.
Again according to the executive summary, the key finding of the analysis is that for the very large firms which determine the changes in the patent numbers, there is no connection between increase in the R&D expenditure and rise in patent applications; simultaneously by comparison with the sample as a whole for these large companies the motives blocking, internal performance incentive and exchange have gained the most in significance in the last few years. Therefore, as the increase in patent applications cannot so much be traced back to R&D increases, it is rather determined by the fact that the large applicants for patents have been using patents in the technology competition in a targeted manner (blocking) and understand them as currency in the external technology market as well as an indicator in internal R&D management. The main result, therefore, is that patenting has become a multi motive game the dynamic of which is essentially the result of a patent race of the large enterprises.
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