Technology Licensing Agreements Research Articles

BASF and NZRCC sign technology licence agreement for production of isononyl alcohol

BASF and NZRCC sign technology licence agreement for production of isononyl alcohol

Key influencing factors for the success of external innovation strategies in the biotechnology industry

PurposeNumerous biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms have undergone considerable changes and adapted to the challenge of developing sustainable products and services. However, few studies have explored the factors that contribute to the success of external innovation and value co-creation strategies adopted by biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms. The purpose of this study is to examine how biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries use value co-creation strategies to obtain external resources.Design/methodology/approachThis study developed a conceptual framework based on the relevant literature. The study applied a resource-based approach, dynamic capability theory and a qualitative multiple-case study design to investigate several research questions; semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 11 biotechnology/pharmaceutical firms in Taiwan, and the data extracted from the interview content were axially coded.FindingsThis study revealed that factors such as dynamic marketing capabilities and process optimization contributed to the success of the aforementioned strategies; several propositions were also developed on the basis of the literature review and coded data, thereby providing insights regarding the relative efficacy and propriety of various external innovation and value co-creation strategies and models in various situations and contexts. Firms and technology providers might enter a technology licensing agreement, establish a joint venture company; participate in a merger/acquisition depending on their size, research and development capabilities; or goals and time- and cost-related factors.Originality/valueThe main original contributions of this study are the proposed conceptual framework and the insights provided regarding the relative efficacy and propriety of different external innovation and value co-creation strategies and models in different situations and contexts.

Research Progress on Powder Injection Molding in Malaysia-A Review

In this era, parts complexity, dimensional accuracy, and cost-effectiveness are one of thebasic requirements of the modern industry. Most of the conventional manufacturingtechniques have failed to fulfill the industry’s needs. Powder injection molding (PIM) startedin the early 70s, which is a combination of powder metallurgy and plastic injection moldingthat fulfills the gaps in conventional manufacturing techniques. In Malaysia, PIM wasintroduced by SIRIM Sdn Bhd Malaysia in late 2000. The latter few universities startedworking on PIM. Among all universities, the Advanced Functional Materials Research(AFM) group at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) started to work in 2008 under thedirection of Prof. F. Ahmad and was decided to target various industries and their latestrequirements. The work completed during the past 11 years has been published in varioushigh-quality international journals, secure intellectual property (IP), i.e., trademarks, patents,a pre-commercialization grant from the government, one commercialization agreement, andsigned a technology licensing agreement. They also worked on carbon Nanotube reinforcedcopper nanocomposite for thermal management and secured two patents. This project wascommercialized for heat sink materials for LED Lights. The group is also working oncontrolling the orientation of fibers in the metal matrix to enhance thermal conductivity.Moreover, grafting graphene on metal oxide for its potential use as a radiation shieldingmaterial is one of the noble works. Currently, the group is working on the fabrication of softmagnetic material with enhanced permeability for potential use in hearing Aids, electricmotors, and several other applications. Besides, bio-medical parts like a dental screw, biomedical material of 316L SS reinforced by nano Titanium and additive manufacturing byusing ultra-fused BASF 316L SS parts made through FDM represent the scope of works inPIM.

External Verifiability of Accounting Information and Intangible Asset Transactions

Firms commonly use disaggregated accounting information to facilitate efficient contracting over intangible assets. However, reliance on accounting measures creates information asymmetries and thus a role for contract audits. Using a hand-collected sample of technology licensing agreements with royalties based on product-line revenues, I investigate how perceived weaknesses in the licensee’s accounting system and reporting flexibility affect the design of two key audit terms — (1) the scope of audit rights, and (2) penalties for adverse audit outcomes. I find that perceived weaknesses in the licensee’s reporting system lead to the granting of broader audit rights to the licensor, consistent with licensors demanding broader auditor rights when the licensee’s accounting system is believed to be less reliable. However, when the licensee has greater reporting flexibility, the contracting parties are more likely to include penalties in their agreements, consistent with the deterrence theory that penalties are a more cost-effective means to discourage intentional misreporting. Licenses covering more territory and having longer durations are associated with narrower audit scope terms, consistent with the self-enforcement theory that the greater the opportunity cost of early termination, the greater the licensee’s incentives to self-enforce. Overall, my results suggest that audit scope and penalties can improve contracting efficiency in two ways.

Amiad signs filter licencing agreement with Dow Global Technologies

Amiad Water Systems Ltd has entered into a patent and technology licence agreement with Dow Global Technologies LLC which gives the Israeli company an exclusive royalty-bearing licence to use and sell the Tequatic™ Plus Filter.

Element 1 signs tech licensing deal with Asian manufacturer

US-based Element 1 Corporation has signed a technology licence agreement for its S-Series Hydrogen Generator with a global manufacturing company based in Asia. Under the agreement, e1 will provide a licence to its industry-leading hydrogen generation technology, as well as engineering consulting services, to advance future versions of the unnamed customer's fuel cell power systems.

Payment types included on technology licensing agreements and earnings distribution among Portuguese universities

Knowledge and technology transfer practices between universities and industry are aimed to enhance the value of research and development outcomes. They allow researchers and universities to obtain resources and revenues through the establishment of licensing and cooperative research and development agreements. The main objective and contribution of this paper is to provide evidence on what are the main payment types in use by university Technology Transfer Units (TTUs) ensuring a comprehensive overview of the concepts and practices under assessment. This approach also gave us the opportunity to know the earnings distribution among the Portuguese public universities, and to list different dispositions influencing the value of a licensing agreement. Interviews to eight Portuguese university TTUs have been done as a way of perceiving from an insider perspective the issues that this paper wants to emphasize and an extensive literature review has been done, which included the review of the intellectual property regulation of most Portuguese public universities.

Evading the Boomerang Effect: Using the Grant-Back Clause to Further Generative Appropriability from Technology Licensing Deals

Technology licensing agreements potentially can create future appropriability problems. Drawing on the appropriability literature, we argue that the inclusion of a grant-back clause in technology licensing agreements is an attempt to balance the gains from and protection of the focal firms’ technologies. We hypothesize that the closer the licensed technology is to the licensor’s core patented technologies, the more likely the licensing agreement will include a grant-back clause, while the closer the licensed technology is to the licensee’s core patent portfolio, the less likely the agreement will include a grant-back clause. We hypothesize also that technological uncertainty is a positive moderator in the decision to include a grant-back clause, if the licensed technology is close to either the licensee’s or the licensor’s core technologies. We employ a hierarchical nested decision model to test the hypotheses on a sample of 397 licensed technologies. This method allows us to model the choice to include a grant-back clause as nested in the decision about which technologies to license out. We find broad support for our theoretical arguments.

MO‐D‐BRB‐02: SBRT Treatment Planning and Delivery

Increased use of SBRT and hypofractionation in radiation oncology practice has posted a number of challenges to medical physicist, ranging from planning, image‐guided patient setup and on‐treatment monitoring, to quality assurance (QA) and dose delivery. This symposium is designed to provide current knowledge necessary for the safe and efficient implementation of SBRT in various linac platforms, including the emerging digital linacs equipped with high dose rate FFF beams. Issues related to 4D CT, PET and MRI simulations, 3D/4D CBCT guided patient setup, real‐time image guidance during SBRT dose delivery using gated/un‐gated VMAT/IMRT, and technical advancements in QA of SBRT (in particular, strategies dealing with high dose rate FFF beams) will be addressed. The symposium will help the attendees to gain a comprehensive understanding of the SBRT workflow and facilitate their clinical implementation of the state‐of‐art imaging and planning techniques. Learning Objectives: Present background knowledge of SBRT, describe essential requirements for safe implementation of SBRT, and discuss issues specific to SBRT treatment planning and QA. Update on the use of multi‐dimensional and multi‐modality imaging for reliable guidance of SBRT. Discuss treatment planning and QA issues specific to SBRT. Provide a comprehensive overview of emerging digital linacs and summarize the key geometric and dosimetric features of the new generation of linacs for substantially improved SBRT.NIH/NCI; Varian Medical Systems; F. Yin, Duke University has a research agreement with Varian Medical Systems. In addition to research grant, I had a technology license agreement with Varian Medical Systems

MO‐D‐BRB‐01: Fundamental Aspects of SBRT

Increased use of SBRT and hypofractionation in radiation oncology practice has posted a number of challenges to medical physicist, ranging from planning, image‐guided patient setup and on‐treatment monitoring, to quality assurance (QA) and dose delivery. This symposium is designed to provide current knowledge necessary for the safe and efficient implementation of SBRT in various linac platforms, including the emerging digital linacs equipped with high dose rate FFF beams. Issues related to 4D CT, PET and MRI simulations, 3D/4D CBCT guided patient setup, real‐time image guidance during SBRT dose delivery using gated/un‐gated VMAT/IMRT, and technical advancements in QA of SBRT (in particular, strategies dealing with high dose rate FFF beams) will be addressed. The symposium will help the attendees to gain a comprehensive understanding of the SBRT workflow and facilitate their clinical implementation of the state‐of‐art imaging and planning techniques. Learning Objectives: Present background knowledge of SBRT, describe essential requirements for safe implementation of SBRT, and discuss issues specific to SBRT treatment planning and QA. Update on the use of multi‐dimensional and multi‐modality imaging for reliable guidance of SBRT. Discuss treatment planning and QA issues specific to SBRT. Provide a comprehensive overview of emerging digital linacs and summarize the key geometric and dosimetric features of the new generation of linacs for substantially improved SBRT.NIH/NCI; Varian Medical Systems; F. Yin, Duke University has a research agreement with Varian Medical Systems. In addition to research grant, I had a technology license agreement with Varian Medical Systems

MO‐D‐BRB‐03: Quality Assurance of SBRT

Increased use of SBRT and hypofractionation in radiation oncology practice has posted a number of challenges to medical physicist, ranging from planning, image‐guided patient setup and on‐treatment monitoring, to quality assurance (QA) and dose delivery. This symposium is designed to provide current knowledge necessary for the safe and efficient implementation of SBRT in various linac platforms, including the emerging digital linacs equipped with high dose rate FFF beams. Issues related to 4D CT, PET and MRI simulations, 3D/4D CBCT guided patient setup, real‐time image guidance during SBRT dose delivery using gated/un‐gated VMAT/IMRT, and technical advancements in QA of SBRT (in particular, strategies dealing with high dose rate FFF beams) will be addressed. The symposium will help the attendees to gain a comprehensive understanding of the SBRT workflow and facilitate their clinical implementation of the state‐of‐art imaging and planning techniques. Learning Objectives: Present background knowledge of SBRT, describe essential requirements for safe implementation of SBRT, and discuss issues specific to SBRT treatment planning and QA. Update on the use of multi‐dimensional and multi‐modality imaging for reliable guidance of SBRT. Discuss treatment planning and QA issues specific to SBRT. Provide a comprehensive overview of emerging digital linacs and summarize the key geometric and dosimetric features of the new generation of linacs for substantially improved SBRT.NIH/NCI; Varian Medical Systems; F. Yin, Duke University has a research agreement with Varian Medical Systems. In addition to research grant, I had a technology license agreement with Varian Medical Systems

MO‐D‐BRB‐00: SBRT Workflow Overview

Increased use of SBRT and hypofractionation in radiation oncology practice has posted a number of challenges to medical physicist, ranging from planning, image‐guided patient setup and on‐treatment monitoring, to quality assurance (QA) and dose delivery. This symposium is designed to provide current knowledge necessary for the safe and efficient implementation of SBRT in various linac platforms, including the emerging digital linacs equipped with high dose rate FFF beams. Issues related to 4D CT, PET and MRI simulations, 3D/4D CBCT guided patient setup, real‐time image guidance during SBRT dose delivery using gated/un‐gated VMAT/IMRT, and technical advancements in QA of SBRT (in particular, strategies dealing with high dose rate FFF beams) will be addressed. The symposium will help the attendees to gain a comprehensive understanding of the SBRT workflow and facilitate their clinical implementation of the state‐of‐art imaging and planning techniques. Learning Objectives: Present background knowledge of SBRT, describe essential requirements for safe implementation of SBRT, and discuss issues specific to SBRT treatment planning and QA. Update on the use of multi‐dimensional and multi‐modality imaging for reliable guidance of SBRT. Discuss treatment planning and QA issues specific to SBRT. Provide a comprehensive overview of emerging digital linacs and summarize the key geometric and dosimetric features of the new generation of linacs for substantially improved SBRT.NIH/NCI; Varian Medical Systems; F. Yin, Duke University has a research agreement with Varian Medical Systems. In addition to research grant, I had a technology license agreement with Varian Medical Systems

Technology Licensing Agreements from an Organizational Learning Perspective

New product innovation is a process of embodying new knowledge in a product and technology licensing is getting popular as a means to innovations and introduction of new product to the market in today`s competitive global market environment. Incumbents often rely on technology licensing to access new product opportunities created by other firms. Prior research has examined various aspects of technology licensing agreements such as specific contract terms of licensing agreements, e.g., distribution of control rights, exclusivity of licensing agreements, cross-licensing, and the scope of licensing agreements. This study aims to provide answers to an important, but under-researched question: why do some incumbents initiate more licensing agreement for exploratory learning while others do it for exploitative learning along the innovation process?We attempt to extend our knowledge of licensing agreements from an organizational learning perspective. Technology licensing as a specific form of interfirm linkages can be initiated with different learning objectives along the process of new product innovation. The exploratory stages of the innovation process such as discovery or research stages involve extensive searches to create new knowledge or capabilities, whereas the exploitative stages of the innovation process such as application or test stages near the commercialization are more focused on developing specific applications or improving their efficiency or reliability. Thus, different stages of the innovation process generate different types of learning and the resulting technological resources. We examine when incumbents as licensees initiate more licensing agreements for exploratory learning objectives and when more for exploitative learning objectives, focusing on two factors that may influence a firm`s formation of exploratory and exploitative licensing agreements: 1) its past radical and incremental innovation experience and 2) its internal investments in R&D and marketing. We develop and test our hypotheses regarding the relationship between a firm`s radical and incremental new product experience, R&D investment intensity and marketing investment intensity, and the likelihood of engaging in exploratory and exploitive licensing agreements. Using data collected from various secondary sources (Recap database, Compustat database, and FDA website), we analyzed technology licensing agreements initiated in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries from 1988 to 2011. The results of this study show that incumbents initiate exploratory rather than exploitative licensing agreements when they have more radical innovation experience and when they invest in R&D activities more intensively; in contrast, they initiate exploitative rather than exploratory licensing agreements when they have more incremental innovation experience and when they invest in marketing activities more intensively. The findings of this study contribute to the licensing and interfirm cooperation studies. First, this study lays a foundation to understand the organizational learning aspect of technology licensing agreements. Second, this study sheds lights on how a firm`s internal investments in R&D and marketing are linked to its tendency to initiate licensing agreements along the innovation process. Finally, the findings of this study provide important insight to managers regarding which technologies to gain via licensing agreements. This study suggests that firms need to consider their internal investments in R&D and marketing as well as their past innovation experiences when they initiate licensing agreements along the process of new product innovation.

Investor Responses to Licensing Announcements: The Use of Market Power and Learning Logics

Among various forms of strategic alliance, technology licensing agreements have attracted significant managerial and scholarly attention. In this paper, we examine the differential abnormal returns derived by a licensor and licensee in the backdrop of whether a focal licensing agreement is horizontal (i.e. between firms in the same industry) or non-horizontal (across different industries). Our analysis shows that although on the whole, investors view licensors more favorably than licensees after the announcement of a licensing agreement, they use two different logics--the first, a market power logic and the second, a learning logic, in evaluating the focal licensor and licensee. In horizontal agreements, licensors are positively evaluated by investors when they pair with licensees that are relatively better than them in terms of prior performance and capital intensity. On the other hand, in non-horizontal agreements, licensees generate greater positive abnormal returns when they signal the possession of greater abilities to learn relative to the licensor.

Marketing control rights and their distribution within technology licensing agreements: a real options perspective

Technology licensing continues to gain popularity as firms seek new sources of revenue from their product development activities. A key decision for the licensor involves whether to distribute marketing control rights associated with licensed technology on a more or less restrictive basis. Drawing on the real options literature, this paper argues that factors related to the top management mindset of the licensor and the marketing capabilities of the licensee impact the licensor’s distribution decision. A logit analysis of 129 technology licensing agreements within the pharmaceutical industry provides strong support for the hypothesized variables and broadens researchers’ understanding of an important marketing decision related to innovation management and the design of inter-firm relationships.

Siemens and Aramco sign technology license agreement

Siemens and Aramco sign technology license agreement

Acquisitions versus licensing agreements as vehicles for technology transfer

Traditionally, emerging economies have sought to acquire technology and know-how from inward FDI and/or technology licensing agreements. In the recent past, countries such as India and Brazil followed the lead of Japan and resorted to technology licensing agreements in a major way for their requirements of technology and know-how. In recent years, several emerging economies, with India and China being the most prominent, have acquired foreign firms with acquisition of technology and know-how as one of the principal motives for such overseas investments. This paper argues that such overseas acquisitions are a much more efficient and inexpensive source of technology and know-how for countries such as India than licensing agreements.

Does One Size Fit All? The Multiple Organizational Forms Leading to Successful Academic Entrepreneurship

This paper offers an integrative theory, through the use of transaction cost theory principles, that attempts to match the attributes of university–held innovations with the specific organizational form that best supports the identified attributes in innovation commercialization efforts. Two commonly utilized organizational forms are considered: the spin–off and the technology license agreement. Additionally, innovation transfer is conceptualized as a transaction and each of the organizational forms is considered an alternate governance mechanism for the management of the commercialization transaction. It is further conceptualized that by minimizing transaction costs, through the proper selection of the organizational form, universities may increase the odds of successful revenue generation from their entrepreneurial efforts. The overall goal of the paper is to enhance our understanding of proper organizational form–innovation attribute alignment as a key driver of innovation commercialization success, so that universities and their industry partners can increase their effectiveness in commercialization activities.

Decision-making for new technology: A multi-actor, multi-objective method

Technology managers increasingly face problems of group decision. The scale and complexity of research, development and alliance efforts in emerging fields of technology mandate as correspondingly sophisticated form of group coordination. Information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology are good examples of sectors with complex coordination problems. Choices made include the selection of projects, the choice of investment alternatives, and the formation of technology licensing agreements. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods are often used to help decision-makers in such situations. This paper explores an approach closely related to MCDA, known as exchange modeling. Exchange modeling incorporates actor preferences, and assumptions about the play of the game, to better examine the resulting preferences of groups. The advantage of this method is that the results provide an improved prescription for strategy, given the constraints of preferences and existing alliance structures. The model is motivated based upon the needs of technology managers in new, converging fields of technology. The model is formally analyzed using operations research techniques. We then apply the model to a representative technology management problem in the converging fields of informatics, bio and nanotechnology.

Licensing duration in foreign markets: A real options perspective

Licensing can be considered an initial trial of a foreign market before a firm fully commits to it through other investment modes. The length of trial has great importance, because licensing duration represents part of the licensing agreement. When it is too short, the firm may not acquire the necessary experience and knowledge of the foreign market, but if it is too long, the firm misses optimal expansion timing. Arguing that licensing can be considered as a European-style real option with a fixed holding period, we develop and test a model of the determinants of licensing duration in foreign markets. Empirical results based on a sample of firms in various countries show that uncertainty and threat of competitive pre-emption in the foreign market are related to shorter duration of the technology licensing agreements. We also find that irreversibility of the impending investment moderates the relationships between uncertainty and duration. Specifically, market and technology uncertainties in the foreign market induce shorter contracts under low levels of irreversibility.