Corporate management of intellectual property in Japan

International Journal of Technology Management

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 121-148

  Granstrand, Ove ^a,b  

^a CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Sweden)

^b STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CORPORATE MANAGEMENT; INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL MANAGEMENT; JAPAN; PATENT ORGANIZATION; TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT;

INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT; INDUSTRY; LAWS AND LEGISLATION; OPERATIONS RESEARCH; SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS; STRATEGIC PLANNING;

PATENTS AND INVENTIONS;

EID: 0033906728     PISSN: 02675730     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Intellectual property refers to patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, designs, utility models, artistic work etc.
2. Granstrand, O. (1997) 'The shift towards intellectual capitalism - the role of infocom technologies', CIM Working Paper No. 3, Dept. of Industrial Management and Economics, Chalmers Univ. of Technology, S-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden.
3. The study was carried out by the author and colleagues under the auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. See further Granstrand, O. (1999) The Economics and [11].
4. A similar result was found in Eternal and Dulude [5] as well for a sample of large European, Japanese and US MNCs.
5. Eternal, H. and Dulude, L.S. (1987) 'Patenting patterns in 25 large multinational enterprises', Technovation, Vol. 7, pp.1-15.
6. A study by the author of 10 US large corporations (General Electric, ITT, Xerox, Pfizer, Motorola, 3M, Honeywell, Control Data, RCA, and Zenith) in 1985 showed a patent-to-R&D cost ratio in the range 1-3%. However, the ratio of number of patent applications per R&D dollar has been over ten times higher in Japan relative to the USA in leading chemical, electrical, and mechanical corporations.
7. Mansfield, E. (1986) 'Patents and innovation: an empirical study', Management Science, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp.173-181.
8. Taylor, C. T. and Silberston, Z. A. (1973) The Economic Impact of the Patent System. A study of the British experience, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
9. The authors call them successive stages of patent organization, but present no historical evidence that the types constitute stages in some sort of evolution of the patent organization. Nevertheless, given that patent resources grow overall, the types are likely to follow roughly upon each other, possibly with some leaps.
10. The concept of culture has come into popular use - and misuse - in management in the last few decades. Despite a certain vagueness and tendency to use culture as a catch-all concept, it will be used here since it after all captures some important, if yet evasive, features in organizations. A standard textbook in social psychology has the following definition: "Culture includes all institutionalized ways and the implicit cultural beliefs, norms, values and premises which underline and govern conduct" (Krech et al. [11], p. 380).
11. Krech, D., Crutchfield, R.S. and Ballachey, E.L. (1962) Individual in Society: A Textbook of Social Psychology, Int'l. Student Ed., New York: McGraw-Hill.
12. A subculture is simply speaking "a culture within a culture".
13. JPA was formed in 1938 by some large corporations like Toshiba and Hitachi. It was originally called Chrysanthemum Feast Club and was renamed Japan Patent Association in 1959.
14. Intellectual capital is here taken synonymously with intangible or immaterial assets, comprising intellectual property, human capital and 'relational capital' (goodwill, organizational capital etc.). A firm's total capital base then consists of physical, financial and intellectual capital.
15. Labels such as Chief Information Officer, Chief Knowledge Officer, IC Director, Intellectual Asset Manager, and the like do crop up, however, as fans and fads of information businesses proliferate.
16. See Fortune [17] for the case of the European insurance company Skandia. The article also illustrates how US companies like Dow Chemical run their patent departments as profit centres.
17. Fortune (1994) 'Your company's most valuable asset: intellectual capital', Fortune, Oct. 3, pp.28-33.
18. Granstrand, O. and Sjölander, S. (1990) 'Managing innovation in multi-technology corporations', Research Policy, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp.35-60.
19. Granstrand, O. and Oskarsson, C. (1994) 'Technology diversification in mul-tech corporations', IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp.355-364.
20. An example of a large-scale legal secrecy case is the one regarding Volkswagen's hireover of Mr. Lopez from General Motors, where General Motors allegedly lost many trade secrets. Other examples come from biotech firms in Silicon Valley, where many moves of key personnel between firms are accompanied by secrecy suits.
21. In all fairness it must be said that some of these have a high level of professional competence and insight in the company's technologies, but they are bogged down in various tasks, leaving their real competence underutilized many times. It must also be said that on the other hand there are also some traditional patent engineers that stick to a pretty narrow range of operational activities.