Technology strategy for enhancing the public-to-private technology transfer: evidence from the duration of patent

Abstract

Patents are typically characterized as assets of great values. Nevertheless, there are many patents that are actually never used. In this article, we claim that there is a relationship between the duration of patents and the characteristics of the underlying invention. From the viewpoint of Public Research Institutes, the duration of patents may be a proxy of probability of technology transfer because the long lived patents have higher value and more chances to be transferred. We characterize the patents along different dimensions captured by the renewal and application data, i.e. collaboration, scope, competitiveness and attractiveness. The results of hazard rate duration analysis tell us that long lived patents are characterized by being more focused, having more competitiveness, and being more collaborative. In addition, it is analysed that patents in chemical industry expire faster than those in electrical/electronic industry. Though this fact is against the general intuition, it may be reasonable from a viewpoint of technology transfer.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Professor Almas Heshmati for his superb and invaluable assistance in handling and analysing the data for this research.

Notes

¹ Siegel et al. (2003) build on researches of Mansfield (1995), Trajtenberg et al. (1997), Henderson et al. (1998), Jensen and Thusby (2001) and Thursby and Kemp (2002).

² www.techreview.com

³ Technology cycle time: This indicator of a firm's speed in turning leading-edge technology into intellectual property is defined as the median age (in years) of the US patents cited as prior art in the company's patents.