Effects of catch-up and incumbent firms’ SEP strategic manoeuvres

Dong-hyu Kim

Research Policy, 2022, vol. 51, issue 5

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of standard-essential patents (SEPs) to identify strategic differences between firms in advanced countries and those in latecomer countries. By comparing the SEP data-sets of incumbent and catch-up groups of the top 10 SEP firms, this paper has discovered the following four main findings. First, SEP strategic manoeuvres work as an effective way of expanding the sphere of catch-up firms’ influence. Particularly after passing a certain threshold, catch-up firms’ technological influence increases in an exponential manner. Second, for incumbent firms, SEP strategic manoeuvres serve as a catalyst to deepen the development of self-reliant trajectories embodied in the history and future of standards. Third, catch-up firms have specialised in short cycle technologies for self-reinforcing capability. Fourth, the effects of SEP strategic manoeuvres and international protection size on the likelihood of SEP litigation are greater for catch-up firms than for incumbent firms. These findings highlight the dual role of standards-setting organisations (SSOs) for catch-up firms (i.e., knowledge-learning and knowledge-diffusion spaces). For incumbent firms, these findings stress the importance of establishing reinforcing mechanisms to align long-standing self-reliant knowledge paths with the direction of anticipatory standardisation. This discovery provides strategic insights within the context of post catch-up strategy.

Keywords: Standards; Patents; SEP; Catch-up; Incumbent; ICT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733322000233
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:51:y:2022:i:5:s0048733322000233

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2022.104495

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().