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首页> 外文会议>IEEE International Symposium on Innovation and Entrepreneurship >Contextual Factors Affecting Decisions About Intellectual Property Licensing Provisions in Collaboration Agreements for Open Innovation Projects of Complex Technological Organizations
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Contextual Factors Affecting Decisions About Intellectual Property Licensing Provisions in Collaboration Agreements for Open Innovation Projects of Complex Technological Organizations

机译：影响复杂技术组织开放式创新项目合作协议中知识产权许可条款决定的上下文因素

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Firms collaborate with partners in research and development (R&D) of new technologies for many reasons such as to access complementary knowledge, know-how or skills, to seek new opportunities outside their traditional technology domain, to sustain their continuous flows of innovation, to reduce time to market, or to share risks and costs [1]. The adoption of collaborative research agreements (CRAs) or collaboration agreements (CAs) is rising rapidly as firms attempt to access innovation from various types of organizations to enhance their traditional in-house innovation [2], [3]. To achieve the objectives of their collaborations, firms need to share knowledge and jointly develop new knowledge. As more firms adopt open collaborative innovation strategies, intellectual property (IP) management has inevitably become important because clear and fair contractual IP terms and conditions such as IP ownership allocation, licensing arrangements and compensation for IP access are required for each collaborative project [4], [5]. Moreover, the firms need to adjust their IP management strategies to fit the unique characteristics and circumstances of each particular project [5].This paper addresses one of the challenges of open innovation—the issue of the right to access and exploit innovations owned by collaborative partners inside and outside the boundary of a research collaboration. Licensing is considered as a solution to the problems of managing knowledge shared between collaborators. To design appropriate IP licensing provisions in collaboration agreements with partners in complex research and technology projects, project managers need to configure a set of critical IP licensing elements based on consideration of a strategic set of contextual factors. Drawing inspiration especially from context-related studies that have recently become more prominent in the field of innovation management [5], [6], we adopt a contextual approach to analyze the influence of a variety of factors on decisions related to IP access and licensing solutions.Our literature review covers the topics of: (1) open innovation and collaborative innovation, (2) IP in collaborative innovation, (3) IP licensing in collaboration agreements, (4) contextualization, and (5) complex product systems. We view the two concepts of open innovation and collaborative innovation as similar, with the labels being generally interchangeable, but, for simplicity and clarity, we adopt the label "collaborative innovation." Collaborative innovation is arguably mandatory practice for firms seeking to maintain success in complex high-tech industries [1], [7]. However, collaborative innovation may be implemented differently depending on the inherent characteristics of each industry. Moreover, since complex products require engineeringintensive tasks and involve costly R&D efforts, they contain valuable technologies associated with higher potential losses if the shared technologies are leaked or imitated [8]. IP rights are therefore crucial for complex goods when technology is shared. IP licensing is used for managing knowledge transfer, facilitating innovation developments and appropriating benefits from collaborative innovation [9], [10], [11]. The essential strategic considerations for IP licensing are exclusivity, cross-licensing, sublicensing, restrictions on market, mode of commercialization, field of application, geographical area, and time, royalties, technical assistance, future developments, taxes, and restraint of trade [4].For this preliminary paper we focus on only one form of IP rights—namely, patent rights—and, for practicability, assume uniformity of the pertinent aspects of patent law across jurisdictions. In subsequent research, these constraints may be relaxed. Our main focus is company-led research collaborations in complex technological industries, such as aerospace, defense, automotive, or offshore hydrocarbon recovery, or telecommunications, in which buyer-supplier collaborations are normal and extensive. We adopted a company-centric approach to analyze IP licensing terms in bilateral agreements between a company and its collaborator. A project manager of a particular company needs to decide whether or not to grant a license to its collaborator for accessing or exploiting its IP, whether or not to acquire a license for the company to access or exploit the collaborator’s IP, and also what the scope of the licenses should be. Moreover, the company and the collaborator need to have a mutual agreement covering how to manage and exploit their jointly-owned IP.Our research methodology includes an inductive approach to theorizing and developing a conceptual framework for IP access and licensing solutions in an open collaborative project. It employs a set of critical IP licensing elements and a strategic set of contextual factors based on systematic literature review and analysis of professional expertise and experience of the authors, and extensive insights, notes, and interviews of project managers, IP managers, patent attorneys, paralegals, research contract managers, procurement managers, and engineers of an anonymous large-scale international complex product company. An exploratory qualitative research project, based on a case study of the IP strategies in collaborative innovation of that company, will be discussed in a subsequent paper.The results of this current paper include how our framework was developed and how it may be implemented in practice. We consider two types of knowledge—prior knowledge (background IP) and new knowledge developed within a collaborative project (foreground IP)—and the IP access issues that appear after the ownership of IP rights have been allocated or fully transferred. We do not consider here the complicated details of IP inventorship, IP ownership rights allocation or the transfer of IP ownership rights. The IP rights could be owned solely by either the Company or by the Collaborator, or jointly owned by the two parties. Thus, there are six categories of the IP in our consideration including: (1) Company background IP; (2) Company foreground IP; (3) Collaborator background IP; (4) Collaborator foreground IP; (5) Joint background IP; and (6) Joint foreground IP. The Company needs to make different decisions for each category of IP.The main IP licensing elements in our proposed framework consist of exclusivity, geographic scope, field of application, time frame, sub-licensing scope, and level of compensation. In addition, we have identified nine contextual factors as follows:(1)Participation of Collaborator in Company's activities outside the project boundary;(2)Centrality of the technology to the Company;(3)Ease of substituting Collaborator's technology (modules) in the project with other technologies of third parties;(4)Type of Collaborator based on market intents;(5)Type of Collaborator based on business purposes;(6)Number of collaborators in the project;(7)Share of financial investment in the project;(8)Involvement of any third party in the Company's activities that require the relevant Collaborator IP; and(9)Level of IP management capability of Company.Our proposed IP access and licensing solutions inside and outside the boundary of a collaborative project are drawn from our literature review. They will be tested and refined through future empirical research with large international companies in complex technological industries. The final decision regarding IP access and licensing solutions for each project may be reached by considering the combination of different solutions in particular categories of the contextual factors of a specific collaborative project. The project manager or IP manager may reach that decision by either a managerial judgment path or a quantitative scoring path.In conclusion, our proposed framework may act as a rubric to help project managers or IP managers make decisions about designing and configuring IP access and licensing solutions in any collaborative research project by answering the two main questions: (1) "Does the Company need to grant a license to the Collaborator for using the Company background and foreground IP or not? If yes, what is the scope of the license?" and (2) "Does the Company need to acquire a license from the Collaborator for using the Collaborator background and foreground IP or not? If yes, what is the scope of the license?" A set of critical IP access and licensing elements and a strategic set of contextual factors have been identified for this purpose. Each category of the contextual factors affects the decisions about background and foreground IP access and licensing solutions inside and outside the project boundary in different ways. As a result, we have demonstrated an example of how the framework can be implemented in practice, in which the final decisions can be made either by managerial judgment or quantitative scoring. In our future research, we plan to test and elaborate the framework by using empirical evidence from large international companies in complex technological industries. Ultimately, our framework may be applied to any complex technological organization that needs to manage IP in research collaborations associated with the development of complex technological products.
机译：公司出于多种原因与合作伙伴合作进行新技术的研发（R＆D），例如获得互补的知识，专有技术或技能，在传统技术领域之外寻求新机会，维持其持续不断的创新流，减少上市时间，或分担风险和成本[1]。随着公司试图从各种类型的组织中获取创新以增强其传统的内部创新[2]，[3]，采用协作研究协议（CRA）或协作协议（CA）的速度正在迅速上升。为了实现合作目标，公司需要共享知识并共同开发新知识。随着越来越多的公司采用开放的协作创新策略，知识产权（IP）管理不可避免地变得很重要，因为每个协作项目都需要明确，公平的合同IP条款和条件，例如IP所有权分配，许可安排和IP访问补偿[4] ，[5]。此外，企业需要调整其知识产权管理策略，以适应每个特定项目的独特特征和情况[5]。本文解决了开放式创新的挑战之一，即合作者拥有和利用创新所拥有的创新权的问题。研究合作范围内外的合作伙伴。许可被视为解决协作者之间共享知识的管理问题的解决方案。为了与复杂的研究和技术项目中的合作伙伴根据合作协议设计适当的IP许可条款，项目经理需要基于对战略性背景因素的考虑，配置一组关键的IP许可要素。尤其是从与上下文相关的研究中汲取灵感，这些研究最近在创新管理领域变得更加突出[5]，[6]，我们采用上下文方法来分析各种因素对与IP访问和许可相关的决策的影响解决方案。我们的文献综述涉及以下主题：（1）开放式创新和协作式创新;（2）协作式创新中的IP;（3）协作协议中的IP许可;（4）上下文化;以及（5）复杂的产品系统。我们认为开放式创新和协作式创新的两个概念相似，标签通常是可互换的，但是为了简单明了起见，我们采用标签“协作式创新”。对于寻求在复杂的高科技行业中保持成功的公司而言，协作创新可以说是强制性的做法[1]，[7]。但是，根据每个行业的固有特性，可以不同地实施协作创新。而且，由于复杂的产品需要大量的工程工作，并且涉及昂贵的研发工作，因此，如果共享的技术被泄露或被模仿，它们所包含的有价值的技术就会带来更高的潜在损失[8]。因此，在共享技术时，知识产权对于复杂商品至关重要。 IP许可用于管理知识转移，促进创新发展并从协作创新中获得收益[9]，[10]，[11]。知识产权许可的基本战略考虑因素是排他性，交叉许可，再许可，市场限制，商业化模式，应用领域，地理区域和时间，特许权使用费，技术援助，未来发展，税收和贸易限制[4]。 ]。在本初步文件中，我们仅关注一种形式的知识产权（即专利权），并且为了切实可行，假设跨辖区的专利法的各个方面具有统一性。在随后的研究中，可以放宽这些限制。我们的主要重点是在航空，国防，汽车或海上油气开采或电信等复杂技术行业中公司主导的研究合作，在这种情况下，买卖双方之间的合作是正常且广泛的。我们采用以公司为中心的方法来分析公司与其合作伙伴之间的双边协议中的IP许可条款。特定公司的项目经理需要决定是否向其合作者授予访问或利用其IP的许可证，是否要获得该公司访问或利用合作者的IP的许可证，以及范围的许可证应该是。此外，公司和合作者需要达成共同协议，涵盖如何管理和利用其共同拥有的IP。我们的研究方法包括归纳法，以在开放的合作项目中理论化和开发IP访问和许可解决方案的概念框架。它基于系统的文献回顾以及对专业知识和作者经验的分析，采用了一系列关键的IP许可要素和战略性的背景因素。，以及对匿名大型国际复杂产品公司的项目经理，知识产权经理，专利律师，律师助理，研究合同经理，采购经理和工程师的广泛见解，说明和访谈。在随后的论文中将讨论基于该公司协作创新中的知识产权策略的案例研究的探索性定性研究项目。本论文的结果包括我们的框架如何开发以及如何在实践中实施。我们考虑两种类型的知识-优先知识（背景IP）和在协作项目中开发的新知识（前景IP）-以及在分配或完全转让IP所有权后出现的IP访问问题。在此我们不考虑知识产权发明人，知识产权所有权分配或知识产权所有权转让的复杂细节。知识产权可以由公司或合作者单独拥有，也可以由双方共同拥有。因此，我们考虑的知识产权有六类，包括：（1）公司背景知识产权; （2）公司前台IP; （3）合作者背景IP; （4）合作者前台IP; （5）联合背景知识产权; （6）联合前景IP。公司需要针对每种IP类别做出不同的决策。我们提议的框架中的IP许可主要要素包括专有性，地理范围，应用领域，时间范围，次​​级许可范围和补偿水平。此外，我们还确定了以下九种环境因素：（1）合作者参与项目边界之外的公司活动;（2）技术对公司的集中度;（3）易于将合作者的技术（模块）替换为合作伙伴的技术（模块）第三方技术的项目;（4）基于市场意图的协作者类型;（5）基于商业目的的协作者类型;（6）项目中的协作者数量;（7）项目中金融投资的份额;（8）任何需要相关合作者IP的第三方参与公司的活动; （9）公司IP管理能力的水平。我们从协作文献中得出的合作项目范围内外的IP访问和许可解决方案。将通过与复杂技术行业的大型国际公司的未来实证研究，对它们进行测试和完善。有关每个项目的IP访问和许可解决方案的最终决定可以通过考虑特定协作项目的特定上下文因素类别中不同解决方案的组合来达成。项目经理或IP经理可以通过管理判断路径或定量评分路径来做出该决定。总而言之，我们提出的框架可以充当原则，以帮助项目经理或IP经理做出有关设计和配置IP访问和许可的决策任何合作研究项目中的解决方案，都要回答两个主要问题：（1）“公司是否需要向合作者授予使用公司背景IP和前景IP的许可证？如果是，许可证的范围是什么？ ” （2）“公司是否需要从协作者那里获得使用协作者的后台IP和前台IP的许可证？如果是，许可证的范围是什么？”为此，已经确定了一组关键的IP访问和许可元素以及一组战略性的背景因素。每种类别的上下文因素都会以不同的方式影响有关项目边界内外的后台IP和前台IP访问以及许可解决方案的决策。结果，我们展示了如何在实践中实施该框架的示例，在该示例中，可以通过管理判断或定量评分来做出最终决定。在未来的研究中，我们计划通过使用来自复杂技术行业的大型国际公司的经验证据来测试和完善该框架。最终，我们的框架可以应用于需要在与复杂技术产品的开发相关的研究合作中管理IP的任何复杂技术组织。

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