IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/respol/v41y2012i1p226-235.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding the technology market for patents: New insights from a licensing survey of Japanese firms

Author

Listed:
  • Kani, Masayo
  • Motohashi, Kazuyuki

Abstract

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the technology market for patents in Japan, by using a novel firm-level dataset that combines a Japanese Patent Office survey titled Survey of Intellectual Property Activities, the Institute of Intellectual Property patent database, and the Licensing Activity Survey conducted by the University of Tokyo. In this paper, we use a two-step model to estimate a firm's licensing propensities; the first step estimates the determinants of potential licensors (willingness to license) and the second step identifies the factors of the actual licensing out of technology (licensing propensity). We found that a significant number of patents held by firms are not licensed out, although the owners are willing to do so. Our econometric analysis reveals that a major factor behind this technology market imperfection is the potential licensors’ difficulty in finding licensing partners.

Suggested Citation

  • Kani, Masayo & Motohashi, Kazuyuki, 2012. "Understanding the technology market for patents: New insights from a licensing survey of Japanese firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 226-235.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:41:y:2012:i:1:p:226-235
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2011.08.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733311001594
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.respol.2011.08.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alvin E. Roth, 2009. "What Have We Learned from Market Design?," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(1), pages 79-112.
    2. Motohashi, Kazuyuki, 2008. "Licensing or not licensing? An empirical analysis of the strategic use of patents by Japanese firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 1548-1555, October.
    3. Arora, Ashish & Fosfuri, Andrea, 2003. "Licensing the market for technology," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 277-295, October.
    4. Ashish Arora & Alfonso Gambardella, 2010. "Ideas for rent: an overview of markets for technology," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 19(3), pages 775-803, June.
    5. David J. TEECE, 2008. "Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Transfer And Licensing Of Know-How And Intellectual Property Understanding the Multinational Enterprise in the Modern World, chapter 5, pages 67-87, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Gambardella, Alfonso & Giuri, Paola & Luzzi, Alessandra, 2007. "The market for patents in Europe," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 1163-1183, October.
    7. Gans, Joshua S. & Stern, Scott, 2003. "The product market and the market for "ideas": commercialization strategies for technology entrepreneurs," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 333-350, February.
    8. Andrea Fosfuri & Marco S. Giarratana, 2010. "Introduction: Trading under the Buttonwood--a foreword to the markets for technology and ideas," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 19(3), pages 767-773, June.
    9. Lichtenthaler, Ulrich, 2010. "Determinants of proactive and reactive technology licensing: A contingency perspective," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 55-66, February.
    10. Hall, B. & Jaffe, A. & Trajtenberg, M., 2001. "The NBER Patent Citations Data File: Lessons, Insights and Methodological Tools," Papers 2001-29, Tel Aviv.
    11. Ashish Arora & Marco Ceccagnoli, 2006. "Patent Protection, Complementary Assets, and Firms' Incentives for Technology Licensing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(2), pages 293-308, February.
    12. Cragg, John G, 1971. "Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 829-844, September.
    13. Goto, Akira & Motohashi, Kazuyuki, 2007. "Construction of a Japanese Patent Database and a first look at Japanese patenting activities," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 1431-1442, November.
    14. Maria Pluvia Zuniga & Dominique Guellec, 2009. "Who Licenses out Patents and Why?: Lessons from a Business Survey," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2009/5, OECD Publishing.
    15. Joshua S. Gans & Scott Stern, 2010. "Is there a market for ideas?," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 19(3), pages 805-837, June.
    16. Motohashi, Kazuyuki & Yun, Xiao, 2007. "China's innovation system reform and growing industry and science linkages," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 1251-1260, October.
    17. Lennart Flood & Urban Gråsjo, 2001. "A Monte Carlo simulation study of Tobit models," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(9), pages 581-584.
    18. Blundell, Richard & Meghir, Costas, 1987. "Bivariate alternatives to the Tobit model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-2), pages 179-200.
    19. Arora, Ashish & Gambardella, Alfonso, 2010. "The Market for Technology," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 641-678, Elsevier.
    20. Arora, Ashish & Gambardella, Alfonso, 1994. "The changing technology of technological change: general and abstract knowledge and the division of innovative labour," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 523-532, September.
    21. Bharat N. Anand & Tarun Khanna, 2000. "The Structure of Licensing Contracts," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 103-135, March.
    22. repec:bla:jindec:v:48:y:2000:i:1:p:103-35 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Motohashi, Kazuyuki, 2005. "University-industry collaborations in Japan: The role of new technology-based firms in transforming the National Innovation System," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 583-594, June.
    24. Cohen, Wesley M. & Goto, Akira & Nagata, Akiya & Nelson, Richard R. & Walsh, John P., 2002. "R&D spillovers, patents and the incentives to innovate in Japan and the United States," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(8-9), pages 1349-1367, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gambardella, Alfonso & Giarratana, Marco S., 2013. "General technological capabilities, product market fragmentation, and markets for technology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 315-325.
    2. Ashish Arora & Andrea Fosfuri & Thomas Rønde, 2013. "Managing Licensing in a Market for Technology," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1092-1106, May.
    3. Marco, Antonio De & Scellato, Giuseppe & Ughetto, Elisa & Caviggioli, Federico, 2017. "Global markets for technology: Evidence from patent transactions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1644-1654.
    4. Ming Li & Xiangdong Chen & Gupeng Zhang, 2017. "How does firm size affect technology licensing? Empirical evidence from China," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1249-1269, September.
    5. O'Connell, Vincent & Lee, Jong-Ho & O'Sullivan, Don, 2018. "The influence of CEO equity incentives on licensing," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 266-277.
    6. Choi, Donghyuk & Kim, Yeonbae, 2018. "Market share and firms’ patent exploitation," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 72, pages 13-23.
    7. Henkel, Joachim, 2022. "Licensing standard-essential patents in the IoT – A value chain perspective on the markets for technology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(10).
    8. Cabaleiro, Goretti, 2019. "Sources of appropriation capacity in licensing agreements," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 86, pages 48-61.
    9. Kelchtermans, Stijn & Leten, Bart & Rabijns, Maarten & Riccaboni, Massimo, 2022. "Do licensors learn from out-licensing? Empirical evidence from the pharmaceutical industry," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    10. Lee, Honggi, 2023. "The heterogeneous effects of patent scope on licensing propensity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(3).
    11. Arora, Ashish & Gambardella, Alfonso, 2010. "The Market for Technology," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 641-678, Elsevier.
    12. Nishimura, Junichi & Okada, Yosuke, 2014. "R&D portfolios and pharmaceutical licensing," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(7), pages 1250-1263.
    13. Figueroa, Nicolás & Serrano, Carlos J., 2019. "Patent trading flows of small and large firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(7), pages 1601-1616.
    14. Dang, Jianwei & Motohashi, Kazuyuki & Huo, Dong, 2022. "Get Pennies from many or get a Dollar from one? Multiple licensing in markets for technology," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    15. Cheng, Lei & Sun, Zhen, 2021. "The white elephant in IP management market frictions, market connections and escalation of commitment," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    16. Federico Frattini & Mattia Bianchi & Simone Franzó, 2019. "Identifying Factors Influencing The Price Of Technology Licenses: A Framework Grounded In Negotiation Research," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 23(05), pages 1-34, June.
    17. Catalina Martinez & Pluvia Zuniga, 2017. "Contracting for technology transfer: patent licensing and know-how in Brazil," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(6), pages 659-689, August.
    18. Bei, Xiaoshu, 2019. "Trademarks, specialized complementary assets, and the external sourcing of innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    19. Grimpe, Christoph & Sofka, Wolfgang & Schulz, Philipp & Borchhardt, Geoffrey Thilo, 2019. "Markets for technology in Europe: Mapping demand and its drivers," ZEW Discussion Papers 19-043, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    20. Dushnitsky, Gary & Klueter, Thomas, 2017. "Which industries are served by online marketplaces for technology?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 651-666.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Technology market; Licensing; Patent; Japan;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D45 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Rationing; Licensing
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:41:y:2012:i:1:p:226-235. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/respol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.