The Practical Logic Of Service Invention Institution

The economic structure has roughly gone through a knowledge‐based economy from the industrial economy, which is from the agricultural economy, in the human history. Nowadays, China’s economy is in the period changing the industrial economy to the knowledge‐based economy. The transformation of China’s economic is developing high‐tech industries and phasing out and reforming traditional industries, trying to enhance the knowledge content in economic construction. In this historical background, the industrialization of scientific and technological knowledge will play a crucial role in the sustained economic development. However, the author found that the institution for technological innovation did not promote optimal output of scientific and technological achievements in China. The greatest important institutional background is the distinction of public ownership and private ownership of property rights institution. The less important institutional background is the intellectual property rights institution considers the public property more important than the private, mostly in the practice of the law. According to the experience of other countries, the service invention is the main source of the patent. The Chinese scholars studied the service invention from diffident perspectives and achieved lots of production. However, most of the existing literatures were based the legal text, ignoring the practice of the service invention institution. And there are few literatures focusing the practical results and the practical logic. On the heritage of the research methods and paradigms, it is the task of sociologist to research the consequences of service invention institution base in a ‘institution‐act’ framework, and the actor’s action strategies in the context of the institution. The sociological empirical studies will exactly show that the social effects of the existing service invention institution. However, there is few studies based on this.One of tradition sociological research fields is institution research. And one of the research points is the practical logic of the institution. This paper’s discussion is based on the disadvantage of existing research literature on the institution of service invention, and based on the property rights analysis methods, in the purpose of discovering the practical logic of service invention institution. The questions of this paper as follows:(1) what kind of property rights has the service invention institution determined?(2) How did the property rights inspire the actors?(3) What are the consequences such incentives to the practice of the service invention? And what is the mechanisms determine the difference of the practical results and institutional goals.The analytic framework used in this paper is the qualitative research approach. The author analysis many cases to answer the questions of this paper, and tries his best to use the most perfect materials. The analysis of this paper is based on the invention‐dispute cases, as well as the interviews of R&D personnel. It is clear found that how employers and employees acted to obtain their maximum benefits, and how the Court determined the property ownership of the patent under the institutional framework, through analysis of these data.From the analysis of the invention‐dispute cases, as well as the interviews of R&D personnel, the author found that the service invention faced lots of trouble. For the definition of the concept of service invention, the definition was too broad. The legal definition is far from the concept of the actors. Because of this difference, the employer and the employee dispute for the property rights of the invention. The institution ensures the interests of the employer, but ignored the interests of the inventor. So the employees have lower enthusiasm for invention. For the property rights, the practice analysis showed that it would have a high practice performance if the employers have the property rights of the invention, not only for the implementation of patent, but also the protection of the invention. However, the high performance is based on the protection of the inventor’s interest.From the analysis of the results of practice of the service invention institution and the mechanisms leading to this result, the author pointed out that the property rights connected the institution and the actors. The empirical studies shows that it’s disadvantage that an invention made by mainly using the material and technical means of the entity determined as a service invention. Because of this prescript, the employees used to lose their private invention copy rights. Some employees take a lot of hidden ways to possess the property rights of the invention. And some employees give up inventing anything except the employer’s assignment. As a result of these actions of the employees, the invention will in a lower level and the goal of the service invention institution will not be reached. In the end of the paper, according to the results of the practice of the service invention institution and the practical logic of this result, the author put forward the possible changes of the service invention institution and the form of the changes.