Title: Uncovering the quality of inventions and licensing process: a theoretical approach

Authors: Radu Munteanu

Addresses: School of Business Administration, University of San Diego, 5998 Alcalá Park, CA 92110, San Diego, USA

Abstract: In this paper I show how an important quality measure for the university inventions, the grant amounts, affects the probability of entering a secrecy agreement and a license. A secrecy is a confidential agreement used by the firms to learn about the quality of inventions, prior to licensing the invention. The paper also introduces a new quality measure for the inventions which is based on the number of secrecy agreements previously executed on the invention. I use two theoretical approaches to model the decision of taking a secrecy, namely sequentially and simultaneously, as a function of invention's quality.

Keywords: licensing probability; licences; patents; university inventions; start-up firms; established firms; secrecy agreements; development stages; reservation values; updating expectations; invention quality; grant amounts; grants; quality measurement; university research.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSEI.2012.047629

International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 2012 Vol.1 No.3, pp.255 - 264

Published online: 29 Nov 2014 *

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