Develop an integrated patent quality matrix for investigating the competitive features among multiple competitive patent pools

The availability of modern technologies depends on the intellectual property licensing transactions. Patent pools, in particular, have emerged as important tools for organizing licensing activities. Traditionally, a patent pool aggregates the patents necessarily to practice a technology and avoids the transactional cost of separately negotiating licenses with multiple patent holders. More recently, competitive patent pools have emerged whereby multiple patent pools directed to related technologies vie for high-quality and essential patents and then competes for licensees. This research develops an integrated patent quality matrix for assessing the competitive features among multiple competing patent pools. The proposed matrix is built based on three primary patent quality dimensions: investment, maintenance (competitiveness) and litigation. Each dimension is composed of well-verified indicators. Based on the matrix result, we can identify the features and distribution of technology life cycle, commercial worth, and legal status of pool patents. This kind of patent quality intelligence can benefit potential licensees in assessing preferable patent pool.

1. Introduction

The intellectual property rights (IPR) to modern technologies are often fragmented among many owners. The required licensing agreements entail considerable transaction costs and the possibility of royalty stacking. This is especially true when access to specific technology standards or platforms requires negotiation with multiple patentees as a result of extensive and fragmented patent ownership in a technology field-the problem of patent thicket [1]. Patent pools, in which two or more patent owners pool and make available their patents to any licensee at a predetermined price, are believed to be an effective solution to the problem of patent thickets. However, each of the patent pools was organized in response to a particular set of business objectives and circumstances. Their purposes were heterogeneous. Some were organized to promote the interests of monopolists or cartels while others were organized to promote competition and benefit the users of patents [2].