Study On The Coalition And Innovation Effect Of Patent Pools

From 21st Century, patented technology has been changing with each passing day. High and new technology industry, such as semiconductor, biological technology, communication, computer and so on fields, has come into being some dense and overlapping "patent thicket", however patent pools provides the most direct solution to the problem of "patent thicket" because it can integrate complementary patents, package patents and unify foreign exploitation of the patent license. Growing bigger and bigger influence in today’s patent pools of industry, many multinational companies take advantage of patent pools to form the technical standard, and compete with other opponents in industry. International industrial competition has further upgraded for the technical standard competition. Patent pools by its unique properties, which are, the specificity of patent, enterprises in the pools between knowledge sharing and complementary resources, become the main paradigm to obtain the core competitiveness of enterprises in the high and new technology industry, and caused the attention of the academia and enterprises. After the "pain of the DVD " in China, the government and enterprises start to be aware that the patent pools play importance role in the development of industry. The construction of the patent pools can promote China’s industrial structure adjustment and improve the international competitiveness of China’s industry. Patent pools are of great realistic significance and value.This paper centred on three problems such as the coalition of patent pools, innovation effect, the transformation of patent technology, to study. We will explore the connotation of the patent pools under the background of knowledge economy era, and provide the theoretical basis and reference to build the patent pools and exploit the patent competition strategy for our government and enterprises.This paper based on defining the patent pools and the relevant concepts, used the related theory and analysis tools of economics and management, regarded the pools rules as the breakthrough point, respectively from the perspective of pools formed "advance-afterwards", developed the game model, and systematically discussed the nature of the patent pools, then we selected the specifically MPEG-2 abroad and domestic TD-SCDMA and IGRS, three patent pools, as the research object, to carry on the case analysis of the innovation effect of patent pools and patent technology transformation, finally, for the government and the enterprises establishment of patent pools provided the countermeasures and suggestions. Useing research methods and having conclusions is as follows:(1) We analyze formation of competitive patent pools at the cases that one market can have only one or two patent pools and many patents. We explain why the number of patents is a key factor in formation of patent pools and draw a conclusion that when building patent pools, we should include the firms who owned more patents in patent pools rather than only considering the essential patents.(2) Aiming at effect of patent pools to firms’R&D investment under cumulative innovation condition, we constructed a dynamic game model in which R&D intensity by firms change with the number of existing patent. By comparing the Markov perfect equilibrium patterns with and without pool, obtained the effect of pool to the R&D intensity equilibrium of different stages, and further analysis the effect of licensing fee and pool scale. The result shows that the existing of pool resolved the patent thicket problem, gradually improved firms’ R&D equilibrium before pool coalition, and maintains the stability of firms’ R&D intensity motives after pool coalition; the higher (lower) of the licensing fee, the lower (higher) of the firms’ R&D equilibrium, and exist an optimal fee level, which maximize the value of patents owned by pool members and firms’R&D intensity; pools of larger size encourage potential members’ R&D incentive more abiding, and pools of smaller size encourage potential members’ R&D incentive stronger.(3) Theoretical model of cumulative innovation effect of competitive patent pools based on different technical standards is developed by dynamic game theory in this paper to study the cumulative innovation effect of competitive patent pool under the different patent types of relationship between patents, which are blocking patent, substitutability patent or additional innovation patent. This research indicates:the R&D investments of an enterprise inside a patent pool increase (or decrease) as the R&D investments of other enterprises inside the same patent pool decrease (or increase) or as the R&D investments of the enterprises inside another patent pool or the R&D investments of the enterprises outside patent pools increase (or decrease) during the patent race of blocking patent. The bigger differentiation degree between patents is, the R&D investments of all enterprises are more during the patent race of substitutability patent. The R&D investments of an enterprise inside a patent pool are bigger than outside the patent pool during the patent race of additional innovation patent.(4) In this paper, we have developed two mathematical models of cumulative innovation effect of competitive patent pools with and without independent license terms to comparative study with the help of dynamic game theory and stochastic analysis. After then, result shows: generally competitive patent pools are able to lower patent licensing fees, promote patent application and increase social welfare as well as encourage firms to innovate, however cumulative innovation effect of competitive patent pools are influenced by multi-factor, for example patent type, degree of differentiation among patent pools, allocation proportion of patent licensing fees and so on, so specifically cumulative innovation effect of competitive patent pools appear complicated.(5) From the perspective of patent technology transformation, by developing a dynamic game model of patent citations in the process of evolution, patent technology transformation problems were analyzed, the results showed that patent pools have the promoting effect of patent technology transformation and a positive role of the application of patent technology. Patent pools can increase the rate of patent citations. In addition, because patent technology transformation of equilibrium evolution path of stochastic nonlinear dynamical systems have positive feedback mechanism characteristics, as long as patents in patent pools have a first-mover advantage, the ability of patent technology transformation of patent pools is more and more strong, the patent pools will form "technology lock", so as to occupy the market completely. This research further illustrates the patent pools have the advantage of formation the technical standard.(6) In this paper, the methods that are tendency analysis, Difference-in-Difference Model and Wilcoxon signed rank test will be applied to study on innovation effects of patent pools that are MPEG-2、TD-SCDMA and IGRS. Our researches indicate that a patent pool can encourage enterprises to innovate, speed up innovation process, promote patents R&D and application extension.