Contextual factors affecting patent licensing provisions in collaboration agreements of complex technological organisations

Abstract

This paper addresses one of the challenges of open innovation, namely, the issue of the right to access and exploit technological innovations owned by collaborative partners inside and outside the boundary of research collaboration. Licensing is widely viewed as a solution to this problem. To design appropriate intellectual property licensing provisions in collaboration agreements with partners in complex research projects, project managers need to configure a set of critical intellectual property licensing elements based on consideration of a strategic set of contextual factors. This study is focused primarily on the licensing of patent rights in company-led research collaborations in complex technological industries. Drawing upon literature analysis and practical professional knowledge, we propose a heuristic framework to guide practitioners in deciding whether or not to grant technology licences to collaborators, whether or not to acquire collaborators' technology licences, and also what the scope of the licences should be.