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

This paper analyzes the relationship between technology licensing and the effectiveness of patent protection. Using the 1994 Carnegie Mellon survey on industrial 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 firm’s ownership of specialized complementary assets. Corresponding author: Marco Ceccagnoli, Strategy Department, INSEAD, 77305 Fontainebleau Cedex, France; email: [email protected] Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Wes Cohen for permission to use data from the CMU survey and for many helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank David Hsu, Michelle Gittelman, Shane Greenstein, Will Mitchell, and seminar participants at the Fuqua School of Business, INSEAD, Copenhagen Business School, Bocconi University, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Wharton School, Rotman School of Management, London Business School, Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, the 4 Annual Roundtable for Engineering Entrepreneurship Research at Georgia Institute of Technology, and two anonymous referees for their suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.