How managers protect intellectual property rights in China using de facto strategies

Foreign firms trying to protect their intellectual property rights (IPRs) in emerging economies are suffering real pressures because these economies usually offer little or no enforcement of IPR. Foreign firms therefore have to resort to approaches unlike those they use in developed countries. This paper explores what managers of foreign firms in China have already tried in their efforts to achieve effective IPR protection – specifically, they have crafted de facto strategies that can protect IPR without using China's legal system or engaging in lawsuits against imitators. These strategies work, and this paper explains how and why, thus offering a potential template for IPR protection in other economies with weak appropriability systems.     

技术创新门限效应研究——基于知识产权保护与技术差异视角

本文利用中国30个省市区2000～2012年数据,采用面板门槛模型,基于知识产权保护与技术差异视角,对技术创新的门限效应进行研究。结果表明,知识产权保护的技术创新效应存在着明显的技术差异与知识产权保护门槛。不管以知识产权保护还是以技术差异作为门槛变量,加强研发物质资本与人力资本投入均能显著促进我国各省区技术创新水平。     

Host Country’s Intellectual Property Rights and Firm’s Equity Participation

There has been an important debate on whether the degree of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in a host country affects the choice of ownership structure of a transnational firm (TNF) for its affiliate. It is argued that a TNF’s equity participation in its affiliate is used to exert control and to protect its assets. Firms with greater equity ownership can control better the extent of the technology spillover, and thus compensate for weaker IPR protection in the host country, than can firms that do not have as large an equity participation in their affiliates. Using a unique data set of a newly developed country’s (South Korea) TNFs, this paper shows that there is a negative relationship between a host country’s standards of IPR protection and a TNF’s equity participation.      

Control of intellectual assets in client relationships: implications for innovation

This empirical study of business‐to‐business service firms examines the determinants and effects of control rights to intellectual assets in a property rights theoretic framework. Regression analyses using survey data suggest that service suppliers that retain control over their intellectual output are more innovative. In long‐term relationships, service firms' clients may thus be better off balancing their need to control outsourced activities with the suppliers' incentives to invest in learning and innovation. Additionally, and aligned with property rights theoretic predictions, service suppliers' bargaining power and their indispensability in service projects are positively associated with their ability to retain control rights. In contrast, innovation capabilities are not very significant in determining control rights allocation between service suppliers and their clients. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Success and Failure in New Industrial Services

The critical role of innovation has long been recognized in physical goods; however, the development of innovative services has received much less attention. The research described here reports on an early major study of success and failure in new industrial services. Building on her integration of two literatures on new product innovation and services marketing, Ulrike de Brentani reports how companies measure new service performance and the factors which are associated with success. She reports that new industrial services share some important success factors with physical goods, such as the firm's market orientation, a formal service development process, project synergy and a truly superior new service offering. Yet she finds that firms must adjust their approach to the distinctive character of services, including customer perceptions of service quality, features that successfully differentiate services in competitive terms and cost reduction.     

OPEN ARCHITECTURE AND R&D INCENTIVES

In open systems, firms give up their property rights to technologies and permit other companies to use these technologies. We ask how an incumbent's architecture choice affects social welfare by altering R&D competition among firms. More specifically, we ask whether an incumbent, by adopting an open system, can establish its socially inefficient technology as the market standard, while an entrant is developing a more efficient technology. It is shown that an incumbent has an incentive to preempt an entrant's competing technology by choosing an open system, but that the open system might result in a premature market standard.     

A theoretical and empirical investigation of property rights sharing in outsourced research,development, and engineering relationships

This article considers the use of property rights to structure ex post bargaining positions in client‐sponsored RD&E. By focusing on the positive externality created by uses of the technology not targeted by the client, the theory produces a novel set of predictions that diverge from standard transaction cost and property rights reasoning; that is, greater contractor property rights are associated with more transaction‐specific investments by the client. Contractor property rights are also predicted to increase as environmental uncertainty increases and as more applications of the technology fall outside the client's intended fields of use. Contract‐level data from 147 RD&E agreements in technology‐intensive settings provide support for these predictions. A secondary examination shows that clients who share property rights with their contractors face reduced opportunism during project execution. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Provider involvement in business service definition: A typology

This paper proposes a typology for provider roles in defining business services. The starting point of the study is the underlying rationale of much of the service purchasing literature that buyers have or can easily access the necessary know-how to procure business services. If this does not hold, the implication is that buying firms would shy away from buying complex services. An alternative perspective recognizes that purchasing business services requires its own set of sourcing capabilities, which may be lacking. Buying firms may have limited know-how in terms of defining and articulating their requirements or not be fully aware of them in the first place. However, the buyer's lack of sourcing capabilities need not be an injunction to internalize the service. In these circumstances, service providers step in, help buying firms specify their requirements and play a key role in defining what is procured and how. We build on this interactive view of service definition to undertake a comparative case analysis of four business service contracting situations arrayed along two dimensions — buyer perceived uncertainty and provider's buyer-specific experience. We conclude that service providers play different roles in each case. These are classified as translating, re-engineering, developing, and fine-tuning roles.     

海外项目质量控制方法探索与实践

随着中国石油工程技术服务企业在国际市场业务范围不断扩大,服务质量、产品质量在市场中地位和发挥的重要作用日显突出,同时在国际高端技术服务市场,国外公司在重视技术的同时更关注服务的品质和项目策划运行,重视项目的质量程控管理。本文旨在分析海外项目的管理特点、探索海外项目管理过程中质量控制体系与方法,为同行业提供海外国际项目质量控制管理方面的经验。     

基于微信公众平台的高校后勤服务体系

针对高校后勤传统的管理和服务方式在当今信息化时代显得比较落后的问题,借助于微信公众平台提出了信息化的高校后勤服务体系。具有新特点的微信公众平台使得高校后勤服务监控实现了实时交互,方便操作,节省人力,便于管理。     

商品属性视角下的现代服务业发展——基于商品属性分割与组合理论的分析

商品、服务乃至生产是包含满足人类需求的多种属性的组合。随着经济发展与社会进步可以对这些属性进行分割、组合。新经济条件下消费行为更加个性化,消费者希望在消费产品物质属性的过程中能得到精神层面的满足,希望得到更多的体验和感受。因而通过商品属性的分割、组合发展现代服务业成为可能,在新经济条件下成为现实。发展现代服务业可以对商品的属性进行分割,也可以通过组合其他属性增加某种商品的属性。利用商品属性的分割、组合发展现代服务业时要突出消费者的参与意识、增加各种体验和感受、增加服务的文化内涵。     

Information services in rural areas — access and delivery

In the UK, considerable interest has been expressed in the extent to which telecommunications could help to improve the accessibility and provision of information services in rural areas. Information services are typically provided by local and central government departments, voluntary advice agencies, and by a wide range of professional, financial, public utility and transport undertakings. It has never been particularly easy to visit service outlets in market towns, but recent changes in the organization and location of information services, together with the withdrawal of many public transport services, have caused a significant deterioration in physical accessibility. The authors summarize their research project on ‘Telecommunications and information services in rural areas’, the final report of which was submitted to the UK Department of the Environment in October 1978.     

CONTRACTING FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES: THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM U.S. CITIES*

Local governments can provide services with their own employees or by contracting with private or public sector providers. We develop a model of this ‘make‐or‐buy’ choice that highlights the trade‐off between productive efficiency and the costs of contract administration. We construct a dataset of service provision choices by U.S. cities and identify a range of service and city characteristics as significant determinants of contracting decisions. Our analysis suggests an important role for economic efficiency concerns, as well as politics, in contracting for government services.     

Transmitters and receivers' investment to avoid interference: Is there an optimal regime?

The management of interference has been, and still is, the main concern in spectrum policy. Historically, interference has been dealt with by heavy regulation under an administrative control regime. Over the last decades, a new approach has been put forward based on users' property rights, better able to cope with a rapidly changing technological environment. The issue of dealing with interference across bands, however, remains crucial: What obligations should be put on users so as to keep interference at a socially acceptable level? Also, given that some unwanted emissions are bound to occur, how can private parties be provided with the right incentives to invest in high-quality reception technology? This paper assesses how well different regulatory regimes can lead to efficient outcomes. It develops an economic model of spectrum interference and identifies the efficient solution. A regime where spectrum users have the power to enjoin intruding emissions beyond a predefined level (property rights protection) is compared with a regime where users are forced to bear with intruding emissions, but are entitled to economic compensation for the harm suffered (liability rules protection). The analysis suggests that different regimes may perform differently under different circumstances depending on the cause of interference and, critically, on whether the services are organised as an open- or a close-architecture system. This suggests that regulators should pay more attention to the specific features of the different bands, and that the appropriate spectrum management regime should be designed to recognise these differences.     

Service quality versus service experience: An empirical examination of the consequential effects in B2B services

The present study investigates the role of service experience in B2B services vis-a-vis service quality. In particular, the study addresses the question: how do the relative effects of service quality versus service experience in a B2B setting influence the immediate (satisfaction and perceived value) and subsequent customer outcomes (loyalty and word of mouth)? To this end, three surveys were conducted (with a combined sample size of 626) of customers of financial consultancy services. The collected data is subjected to factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the study hypotheses. Major findings indicate a stronger influence of service experience on satisfaction and perceived value as compared to service quality. Results also show a stronger indirect effect of service experience on loyalty and word of mouth (via satisfaction) compared to service quality. In addition, service experience was found to influence both perceived utilitarian and hedonic value derived from service while service quality was found to influence only utilitarian value. The findings underline the importance of service experience in a B2B setup.     

低碳能源专利发展态势及国内石油公司对策建议

低碳技术专利申请量从20世纪90年代后期开始急剧增长.大多数低碳技术专利权归发达国家跨国公司所有,面向发展中国家的专利授权有限.全球主要发达国家不断加强低碳技术开发和保护的力度.国际石油工程技术服务公司在非常规天然气技术领域处于优势地位,国际石油公司近几年开始加强专利布局.国际大石油公司对低碳技术的研发投入相对少,他们以并购作为获取低碳资源和低碳技术的主战略途径,并与技术领先公司合作,抢占发展先机.对于中国的石油公司来说,低碳技术价格高昂,引进成本不断增大.为此,国内石油公司可考虑常规天然气领域寻找机会并购拥有核心专利技术油工程技术服务公司;在具有发展前景的技术领合作研发与自主创新双管齐下;在开展合作时,需确保合作对象拥有关键技术;充分运用低碳能源领域的专利信息资源.     

上海生物医药研发外包服务支术市场现状分析

上海生物医药产业的发展非常迅速,而研发外包服务（主要是离岸外包）成为这一产业中最耀眼的明珠。本文根据技术市场管理办公室登记涉外合同交易数据库,分析了上海生物医药研发外包行业的现状、特点、市场规模、优势领域等情况,同时也分析了研发外包服务业在发展过程中存在的一些问题,并提出笔者的一些观点和看法。     

竞争战略的产权观点

产权理论认为，不完备的产权不仅影响利用资产创造价值的程度，也使得人们花费资源用于攫取和保护产权。本文把交易成本看做是与攫取、保护和转移产权相联系的成本。由于攫取和保护行为会耗散企业的价值，企业可以凭借影响攫取和保护的成本来创造价值。本文在产权理论的基础上构建了竞争战略的产权分析框架，并且比较了这一观点与其他竞争战略观点的区别与联系。     

Counterfeit, imitation, reverse engineering and learning: reflections from Chinese manufacturing firms

In a previous paper, we developed an alternative perspective on product imitation and innovation. In this paper, we explore some of our research questions using empirical data gathered in China. While we do not condone counterfeit activities, we explore the role of counterfeiting, imitation and learning from the perspective of Chinese manufacturers and provide insight from a small number of key informants about the motives and incentives for non-consensual acquisition of technology and their views on what Western firms should be doing to counteract the threat to their technological advantage. In this paper, we argue that where companies use the technology property of others to develop their own technology capability without the consent of the other party (non-consensual acquisition of technology), firms should consider whether there are opportunities for collaboration before resorting immediately to the legal tools at their disposal to enforce intellectual property rights and seek financial recompense from infringers without due consideration of the learning, new product development and innovation context. We believe that the findings from our case studies can make a significant contribution towards a better understanding of non-consensual acquisition of technology in an innovation context. In particular, the information gained from the key informants provides their perspective on the causes of non-consensual acquisition of technology and their views and recommendations of how companies affected by this behaviour might be able to better handle this problem.     

Intellectual property: what do teachers and students know?

As society changes from an industrial to a knowledge era increasing importance and value is being placed on intellectual property rights. Technology teachers need to have pedagogical content knowledge of intellectual property if they are to incorporate it into their learning programmes to enable students to consider how to respect others’ intellectual property rights, how to protect their own ideas and how they can legitimately make use of others’ intellectual property. A survey of technology teachers and a small sample of students was undertaken to ascertain their knowledge of intellectual property and any misconceptions which may exist. The findings reflect an awareness of relevant concepts but confusion between key terms such as patent, copyright and registered design.