A new approach for detecting open innovation in patents: the designation of inventor

Alessandro Comai ()
Additional contact information
Alessandro Comai: International University of Japan

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2020, vol. 45, issue 6, No 9, 1797-1822

Abstract: Abstract The purpose of this paper is to understand to what extent open innovation (OI) is utilized in R&D departments by using patents as a main source. The paper adopts the “designation of the inventor” as a new method for detecting open or closed innovation, a method which examines the type of relationship that exists between the inventor(s) and the patent applicant(s). Since the openness or closedness of an invention is mainly measured by analyzing a firm’s co-applicants, the patent’s designation of the inventor indicates whether or not inventors are employees of the applicant. The paper offers new empirical evidence about whether a patent is open or not without surveying inventors and it complements previous studies that failed to describe whether a patent is based on open or closed innovation. After studying a collection of 231 patents in the wind energy sector obtained from the European Patent database, descriptive statistics show that OI Patents (OIPs) where the inventor is under agreement represent approximately 90% of the total number of OIPs, which in turn account for more than 23% of the total number of closed and open types of patent. Additionally, the designation of inventor method is also able to identify closed innovation-based patents. The results also show that a minority of companies utilize a hybrid type of OI, in which the inventors are composed of a mix of external individuals and employees. The results suggest that the method proposed yields a better understanding of how OI as well as other innovation strategies are utilized by firms in a particular industry or technological field.

Keywords: Open innovation; Closed innovation; Patent; Designation of inventor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10961-019-09763-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jtecht:v:45:y:2020:i:6:d:10.1007_s10961-019-09763-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/10961/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10961-019-09763-8

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Technology Transfer is currently edited by Albert N. Link, Donald S. Siegel, Barry Bozeman and Simon Mosey

More articles in The Journal of Technology Transfer from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().