Interlocking Patent Rights and Value Appropriation: Insights From the Razor Industry

This paper analyzes a duopoly-like situation in the wet shaving industry featuring an innovation leader and a follower. In this, the leader claims to have filed “interlocking” patents. The explorative case study examines how the leader filed said patents and how their structures have affected potential value appropriation. In fact, the market leader has claimed technical elements in multiple patents, while the patents themselves do not legally overlap. This analysis will also cover triggers and boundary conditions that facilitate or limit such claim compositions. Finally, the market leader has seemingly been able to successfully appropriate value from its strategy. This study will contribute to the literature on value appropriation, the interplay between corporate engineering and intellectual property functions, as well as the economics literature on patent thickets.