This study is about determining the circumstances which make, the inter- national sales of technology and know-how-through licensing arrangements a viable alternative to FDI and foreign trade for manufacturing firms. It identifies basic motivations for licensing, and examines company characteristics of British'companies in relation to observed licensing strategy overseas. In addition, it examines the effect on licensing of competition in the-sales of technology. A conceptual model of foreign licensing is tested on cross-sectional data gathered from 202 UK-based. and non-UK based companies. Data for 50 of these firms which were not engaged in any licensing activity, were obtained through direct phone calls and from their annual reports for 1980. Data for the remaining-152 companies, -which were involved in licensing arrangements, were obtained through mailed questionnaires and from published sources. In addition, 33 of these company's managers in charge of licensing were interviewed. The data was analysed by a battery of univariate and multivariate techniques. With regard to the costs and benefits of licensing, company executive responses show explicitly two common directions for their evaluation and concern. A company whose foreign licensing consists predominantly of granting licence rights for the use of its patents, trademarks and know-how in industries other than those in which it is itself active, or in the manufacture of products it does not choose to make or market overseas, is generally satisfied to assess the success of its activity by the volume of royalty receipts minus such easily determined direct costs as are incurred in negotiating, obtaining, and maintaining the licence contracts. Companies which are licensing proprietary rights and know-how relating to its own particular products and activities in contrast are much more involved with the licensee, have higher profit opportunity but greater loss exposure, and have much more opportunity to influence the indirect costs and indirect benefits generated by the licensing agreements. Other findings related to cost-benefit of licensing are that companies (1) which spend a relatively larger percentage of value-added on R&D, (2) which are relatively large in their industry, (3) which are more highly diversified, or (4) which have less experience in foreign manufacturing operations are more likely to license in order to supplement their FDI. Also, if there is competition in the sale of technology, managers are more willing-to-licence than to invest, providing the company does not try to preserve its market position in older products facing competition. The results of the study also show that companies which are involved in licensing are indeed distinguishable from those that do not have any licensing engagement, by a number of discriminatory characteristics. The research also shows that these companies do evaluate licensing as an alternative to FDI when they consider manufacturing in host-market. Finally, there is evidence that the firms which are enjoying-relative scale in their industry,. are highly diversified and have high R&D intensity are likely to adoptapolicy involving reciprocal exchange of technology licence with other innovative firms in their industry.

No description available.

The Article discusses digital-era courts’ distortion of (para)copyright principles, deeming it borne of jumbled underlying legislation and a misplaced predilection for adopting licensing terms—even at the expense of recognized use exceptions. Common law evolutionary principles, it is shown, have been abandoned just when they are most needed: the ethereal rightsholder-user balance is increasingly disturbed, and the incipient “generative consumer” is in thrall, not liberated. Finally, the Article puts forth a proposal for the reestablishment of the principle of substantially noninfringing use, showing it to be in the interests of innovation, democracy, and the greater public interest.

The Article discusses digital-era courts’ distortion of (para)copyright principles, deeming it borne of jumbled underlying legislation and a misplaced predilection for adopting licensing terms—even at the expense of recognized use exceptions. Common law evolutionary principles, it is shown, have been abandoned just when they are most needed: the ethereal rightsholder-user balance is increasingly disturbed, and the incipient “generative consumer” is in thrall, not liberated. Finally, the Article puts forth a proposal for the reestablishment of the principle of substantially noninfringing use, showing it to be in the interests of innovation, democracy, and the greater public interest.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Heidelberg.

With the increase of awareness and focus on university research commercialization, much research had been conducted to investigate this subject. It was revealed that because universities were not traditionally built to serve the purpose of commercialization, many obstacles existed in the path of university research commercialization. Historically, research had largely focused on identifying critical factors that impacted the performance of commercialization. However, it was not clear how those findings could be systematically incorporated into the commercialization improvement plan of individual cases. This research intended to fill this gap and provide a framework that could be used by most universities to access and improve their research commercialization process. A case study of a U.S. land-grant university was conducted and a narrative approach was mainly used as the method of data analysis. Under the scope of a single-case study, four sub-studies were conducted to address the goals of this research. First, a framework was developed that incorporated theories of existing research and the value stream map of lean management. Interviews with the intellectual property office and faculty were conducted to determine if the theoretical framework was applicable. It was found that the framework fitted well with the current process of university research commercialization. After that, a survey that covered a sample size of 1110 researchers at the targeted university was conducted to investigate the importance of different resources at different stages of the process. Resources that were under investigation were grouped into four categories: technical, human, social, and financial resources. This research identified the most important resources for research commercialization were industrial connections (social resource) and assistance from the intellectual property (IP) office (human resource), with industrial connections playing a more importance role at the beginning of the process and the IP office from the stage of patent application. To assess organizational characteristics of the targeted university, interviews were conducted with 22 faculty, three representatives from the administration, one representative from the intellectual property office, and one representative from an external organization. Six criteria derived from previous research were used to guide the assessment: (1) expenditures on research and development (RandD), (2) intellectual property policy, (3) research field, (4) key individuals, (5) commitment to innovation, and (6) networking with external relations. It was found that the targeted university had strong evidence of the advantages of expenditures on RandD and research field, however, it was relatively weak in the other four characteristics. The last part of the research involved interviews with two companies for the purpose of developing a best practice for research commercialization with the examples from the industry. Recommendations to improve targeted university's research commercialization were developed based on findings of the research. / Ph. D.

This thesis examines the strategic drivers and processes governing the development of products and/or technologies by multiple economic entities. The thesis adopts an operational approach in addressing the question and examines the how of joint product development. For this purpose, the different mechanisms that enable joint product development licensing, outsourced development, and codevelopment are considered, and the focus is restricted to the analysis and characterization of the optimal management of joint product development mechanisms. Regarding the mechanism of licensing, the thesis examines both its dynamic inter-temporal implications (i.e., how licenses should be structured given that licensing will also occur in the future) as well as the role of the technology in question (i.e., how are licenses affected by the type of technology being licensed). Along the first dimension, the thesis finds that license fees (and the negotiation with potential licensees) may be structured so as to induce a controlled diffusion depending on the technology roadmap the provider firm has laid out for the future. On the second dimension, the study finds that when the technological solution being licensed requires minimal integration from the licensees side, it may be beneficial to restrict attention to a few potential licensees instead of licensing to the entire market. On the codevelopment side, the thesis presents an original case study that uncovers some of the salient features present in many joint development efforts. Subsequently, a mathematical model is proposed that captures the key dimensions of the phenomenon that were identified through the case study. Analysis of the normative model reveals the key role of market and development uncertainty in structuring the formal contractual agreements and sharing the value created through the codevelopment effort.

Two firms with innovative technology are potential licensors in the industry. In addition, there is a potential licensee which only possesses aged technology. When the two potential licensors have exactly the same technology, they will cut the license fee to zero due to severe competition no matter whether the fee is in the format of fixed payments or royalties. When one potential licensor possesses the technology far advanced than the technology the other potential licensor has, those two firms with less advanced technology will ask for technology licensing and pay the license fee in the format of fixed payment.

No / The paper considers the implementation of a virtual manufacturing system as an alternative to outward technology licensing in a high technology industrial sector. Brief theoretical definition and description of the two strategy options is provided to give background and context. This is followed by empirical material from a longitudinal case study of a company that has developed a virtual manufacturing system in addition to its pre-existing outward technology licensing business stream. A summary account of the company history and development is followed by description of the virtual manufacturing proposal. Analysis of this identified a number of competencies that would be required in order to succeed. The final part of the paper describes the company's response to this analysis and discusses early implementation of the virtual system. It is shown that implementation of the proposal has represented a positive response to the business challenges facing the company.

No description available.