Patent Strategies and their Impact on Value Creation: A Contingency Approach

This paper identifies types of patent strategies and analyzes their impact with regard to multiple economic and strategic performance dimensions. The paper further identifies and tests contingent factors that have an impact on the type of patent strategy followed by firms. The empirical analyses are based on a sample of 153 technology-based firms from the U.S.A. and Germany across multiple industries. The results show that firms typically follow one out of four distinctively different patent strategies: (1) a defensive patent strategy, (2) an aggressive licensing strategy, (3) a patent strategy focused on protecting innovations against imitation and enhancing the firm image and (4) a pro-active and comprehensive patent strategy. The type of a firm