Science Research Management ›› 2021, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3): 150-159.

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A research on the dominant promoting factors of patent pool innovation at different development stages

Zhang Lifei,Chen Hui,Su Mengyao   

  1. School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University, Changsha 410079, Hunan, China
  • Received:2018-05-24 Revised:2018-10-13 Online:2021-03-20 Published:2021-03-19

Abstract:    Factors of promoting patent pool dominate differently at different patent pool development stages. This factors include competitive technology development,industry development demand, government policy support, workgroup effort.Taking AVS patent pool as the empirical sample, this article studied the dominant factors of promoting patent pool innovation at different stages, including formation,growth and mature stage. The results show that government policy support is the dominant promoting factor at the stage of formation and growth. Patent pool based on technical standard has the trait of public goods. At the early stage, it is essential for government policy support to avoid market "failure" and reduce "waiting and seeing" of enterprises. In order to support the development of AVS, the Chinese government has established relevant institutions, major scientific research projects, and invested financial funds to help the AVS standard incubation. Key projects were set up in the Tenth Five-Year Plan and the National 863 Program to provide support and convenience for its technological research and development. In addition, the development cycle of the competitive technology MPEG-2 patent pool is not synchronized with the AVS patent pool, and the MPEG-2 patent pool patents are gradually expiring. Competitive technology development becomes the the dominant promoting factor at the growth stage, however, there is a negative relation between competitive technology and AVS innovation at the mature stage. Industrial development demand becomes the dominant promoting factor at the stage of maturity. Therefore, it is critical to further promote the use of patent pool technology by upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry chain. There is a strong correlation between the effort of the working group and government policy support. Collinearity problems occurred in the regression at each stage and variable of working group effort were eliminated, which fully shows that the advancement of the working group′s standardization work depends on government support. 
    Based on the empirical research in this article, the following suggestions are given for the Chinese to build a patent pool of independent intellectual property rights. First of all, in response to the early market failure of the patent pool, the government needs to play a key role to promote the large scale adoption of patent pool technology by key "early bird" enterprises, in particular, promote state-owned enterprises to take the lead in adopting independent standards. At the same time, government public purchases should be strengthened to support independent standard products.
   Secondly, although foreign competitive technologies are relatively mature and have a short return on investment profits, their high patent fees have become a long-term hidden danger for Chinese companies. Therefore, in order to balance short-term and long-term interests, China′s independent patent pool should achieve overall compatibility with competitive technologies, and incorporate relevant equipment modification funds into the government′s overall planning to reduce investors′ worries about adopting new standards. 
   Finally, for some industrial chain links dominated by foreign companies, China needs to make full use of the huge domestic market demand conditions, actively persuade relevant foreign manufacturers to support independent standards, and build chip manufacturers, equipment manufacturers, operators, content providers, etc. The business ecosystem formed by enterprises helps the industrialization of independent standards.

Key words: patent pool;patent pool innovation;dominant promoting factor, AVS patent pool;different development stage