实物期权视角下技术市场特征对高校专利维持 决策的影响研究

高校专利价值的实现主要依靠于专利交易等市场化途径,因此技术市场成为影响高校专利交易和维持的重要外部环境。研究基于实物期权的理论视角,论证了专利技术市场作为外部环境因素对高校专利维持决策的影响。技术市场所包含的交易、需求及供给信息会影响高校发明人对于未来专利交易可能性的判断,从而影响其对专利期权价值的判断,并最终影响其维持决策。基于市场设计理论及产业组织理论,文章提出技术市场涵盖四个方面的特征,包括专利交易总体活跃度、专利商业化时间、市场不确定性以及供给竞争程度。具体地,专利交易总体活跃度、专利商业化时间、市场不确定性这三项技术市场特征对高校专利维持时间均有着正向的影响,而技术市场的供给竞争程度与高校专利维持时间则存在负向关系。文章构建了包含时间动态性的专利维持生存分析模型,并使用1997—2018年211高校发明专利的微观数据进行实证分析,所得结果证实了以上假设。

The impact of technology market characteristics on university patent renewal decisions:From a real option perspective

Universities have been as one of the main patent producers in China.The number of university patent filings has been increasing while in contrast,renewal rates of these patents keep relatively low for a long time.Therefore,how to improve the maintenance of university patents and what are the factors determining the renewal time of university patents remain as critical practical questions to answer.Previous studies on patent renewal mainly pay attention to some inherent patent characteristics,such as the number of claims and grant lag,but ignore the impact of external factors and their dynamics.For university patents,the influence of external technology market dynamics is especially important.Due to the lack of motivation and capabilities to exploit patents by themselves,the main approach for university inventors profiting from patents is through patent transactions in the market,including patent selling and licensing.Thus,technology market can be considered as an external environment highly relevant to value capturing and renewal decisions of university patents.Since this study mainly considers university patents,we define technology market as patent transaction market with universities being patent providers and companies being patent buyers,and we try to investigate how the renewal decisions of university patents are affected by the dynamics of technology market from a real option perspective.Real option theory which was initially proposed by Myers in 1977 argues that the value of an investment project should be equal to the Net Present Value(NPV)of the project plus the value of the future option,especially when the project has a high uncertainty.Following this vein,some scholars start to consider patents as real options since patents cost staged maintenance fees but have uncertain return and high flexibility to exercise.For patents owned by university inventors and have not been commercialized yet,the renewal of such patents can bring option value for them,because it can keep the rights to transact in the future and to take the risks of no transaction occurring.We argue that based on trading and supply information in the technology market,university inventors can estimate the possibilities of future patent transactions,thus able to evaluate the option value of their patents and finally make patent renewal decisions.Following market design theory and industrial organization literature,the study builds four dimensions of technology market characteristics,i.e.trading activeness,average commercialization time,market uncertainty and competition intensity.Firstly,trading activeness measured by the number of recent patent transactions can reflect development level and demand level of technology market,which is similar to the market thickness in the market design theory.We propose that overall trading activeness in a technology field has a positive impact on the renewal time of university patents in this field.If patent transaction is very active in the market,university inventors would expect to be high possibility of future transactions.Besides,formal and informal technology transfer and communication activities strengthen university inventors′awareness of IP protection and exploitation,thus they are more willing to renew their patents to keep future transaction rights.Secondly,commercialization time is defined as the average age of traded patents when they were traded in a tech field,similar to the degree of congestion in the market design theory.We propose that average commercialization time positively affects the renewal time of university patents in the technology field.Information on transaction time from the market can help inventors adjust their expectation on future transaction speed and possibilities.Longer commercialization time may also indicate slower technology iteration in this area,so patent value deceasing with time at a slower rate.Based on industrial organization theory and competition theory,we propose market uncertainty and competition intensity are another two important features of technology market.We propose that market uncertainty in a technology field is positively associated with the renewal time of patents in that field while competition intensity of technology supply has a negative impact on the renewal time of patents in that field.We collect 282,904 invention patents filed by China′s 211 project universities during 1997-2018 from INCOPAT patent database and track university information of each patent from annual statistical report of university science and technology released by the Ministry of Education.Since the dependent variable,patent renewal time we observe is right censored,the ordinary least square regression would generate systematic bias.Therefore,this study employs a survival model that allows time dynamics and empirically examines the determinants of university patent renewal time.We also include various patent characteristics,such as number of claims,family size and number of inventors to control for their impact on patent renewal time.The results provide support for the above four hypotheses.The main conclusion of this research is that technology market stands as a highly relevant external environment in terms of university patent exploitation and renewal decisions.Specifically,trading activeness,average commercialization time and market uncertainty positively affect the renewal time of university patents while competition intensity regarding technology supply has a negative impact.