Patent Protection, Complementary Assets, and Firms’ Incentives for Technology Licensing
基于1994年美国工业研发调查数据，发现专利保护有效性提高会促进缺乏互补资产的企业进行技术许可，但会降低拥有互补资产企业的许可倾向，揭示了知识产权保护对企业边界和技术市场的影响。
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 firm’s ownership of specialized complementary assets.