TRENDS AND STRATEGIES OF PATENT EXPLOITATION – ANALYSIS OF EMPIRICAL DATA

The main purpose of this article is to reveal trends and patent strategies in use and explain the reason behind some of them. This will be achieved by theoretical study and by comparing the forms of patent exploitation over time across chosen European countries, industries, as well as types and sizes of the patenting organization. This article also intends to dwell into exploiting patents for strategic reasons, e.g. by blocking competition. Special insight will be provided into the types of the external patent use, which comprises licensing, cross-licensing, patent sale and a set-up of a new venture. The analysis is based on statistics derived from the PatVal-EU survey and the ten year earlier InnoS&T survey.

The findings of this study show that propensity to exploit patents differs significantly across various countries. Comparing data concerning licensing and cross-licensing it seems that companies nowadays may be reluctant to share their knowledge and intellectual property with competitors without obtaining the same themselves. This underlines the role of patent rights in terms of firms’ competitiveness. The share of blocking patents increased which confirms the growing importance of patents used for strategic reason. “Sleeping patents” still account for more than 15% which indicates a relatively high rate of patent rights with either untapped potential or poorly estimated suitability at the time of product development. This trend is especially valid for public research institutions.

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