An Analysis of Pure-Revenue Technology Licensing

This paper analyzes the incentives of patentholders to license their technologies for pure-revenue reasons. We hypothesize that this decision is mainly driven by characteristics of the innovation, which determine its technological attractiveness, the relevance of transaction costs in its transfer and the importance of the competition effect. By using the NBER Patent Citations Database and an original dataset of patented technologies devoted to license in an Internet marketplace, we find that importance, innovativeness, fit into the firm's core and scope of the innovation affect the patentholder's willingness to license it. Results increase our awareness on the drivers of technology licensing decisions.