Excavating the role of NPEs in the innovation process: Did we start a mission possible?

The past decades have seen the rise of so-called Non-Producing/Practicing Entities (NPEs). NPEs do not use patents for appropriating own R&D investments necessary for developing technologies embedded in own products or services but solely focus on exploiting, enforcing or monetising patents. One might suspect that this behaviour impacts the innovation processes of firms and technological developments in different industrial sectors. Interviews with a panel of experts from a European country reveal most notably that the emergence of NPEs has changed the awareness of firms' man-agement towards patents and the way of managing them. The results also indicate that the contemporary situation is still diffuse and immature, so that their full impact is difficult to understand, even from an interpretivists' perspective. (120 w).