Using Intellectual Property Rights Strategically: A Management Perspective

Markus Reitzig

    Research output: Working paperResearch

    Abstract

    With the share of intellectual property among corporate value constantly rising,management's understanding of the strategic use of patents, trademarks, andcopyrights becomes ever more crucial. The vast majority of articles on patent ortrademark strategies, however, is written by and for lawyers describing advancedprocedural legal tactics but not addressing the problems faced by managers. Onthe other hand, the marketing, technology management, and economics literatureprovides important basic insights to managerial aspects of IPRs but does hardlyexpand on the fundamental knowledge so that it would be directly applicable bystrategy makers. Thus, up to the present a comprehensive description of thecomplexity and variety of using intellectual property rights as additional strategicelements is still missing in the literature. Elaborating on the premise that patentsand trademarks represent important assets in various industries, this articleattempts at defining the content of an `intellectual property strategy' from theperspective of a strategic management scholar by linking the use of IPRs to aseries of strategic management questions. Ultimately, the paper helps strategicmanagers to understand recent observations in the deployment of patents andtrademarks and inspires them to think more creatively about IPRs than they didbefore.
    Original languageEnglish
    Place of PublicationKøbenhavn
    Number of pages25
    Publication statusPublished - 2003

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