独占、授权还是共享——存在随机产出风险的高技术企业专利运作战略研究

Monopoly,licensing or sharing:Patent operation strategy for high-tech firms with random yield

本文研究了存在随机产出风险时供应链上游高技术生产企业的专利运作战略.分别构建了3种最常见专利战略—独占、授权和共享下的供应链上下游决策模型.独占战略下,上游供应商自己生产零件并向下游制造商供货,但生产过程存在随机产出风险;授权战略下,供应商不生产零件但把技术授权给代工厂商并收取专利许可费;共享战略下,供应商把专利共享给代工厂商,当其随机产出实现且不能满足下游订单时由代工厂商来补足订单.研究结果表明,对供应商而言,若下游制造商面临的市场规模较小,则授权战略占优;若市场规模较大,此时哪种战略更好取决于其供应的可靠性:当可靠性较低时独占战略占优,当可靠性较高时共享战略占优.与分散决策相比,集中决策下授权战略占优的区间扩大,而独占战略占优的区间缩小.此外本文还发现,对供应商而言最优的专利战略和社会最优(即对整条供应链而言最优的专利战略)之间存在一定程度的偏离,且偏离的程度随启动成本的降低而加剧,随可靠性的降低而缓解.

This paper investigates the patent operation strategies for the upstream high-tech firms with random yield in supply chains.A supply chain with one upstream supplier and one downstream manufacturer is studied under three common patent strategies:monopoly,licensing and sharing.Under the monopoly strategy,the upstream supplier produces the high-tech components himself for the downstream manufacturer and suffers from the random yield.Under the licensing strategy,the supplier does not produce the components but authorizes the technology to a reliable foundry by charging a patent license fee.Under the sharing strategy,the supplier shares the patent to the foundry to insure that the shortfall order can be made up by the foundry after the supplier's random yield is realized.The results show that when the market potential faced by the manufacturer is small,the patent licensing is the dominant strategy for the high-tech supplier.When the market potential is large,the high-tech supplier chooses the monopoly strategy if its reliability is low and the sharing strategy if the opposite is the case.Compared with the decentralized decision scenario,the dominance interval of the licensing strategy is enlarged but that of the monopoly strategy is shrunk in the centralized decision scenario.This study also shows that there exists a distortion between the optimal patent strategy for the supplier and that for the whole supply chain,and that the degree of distortion will be enlarged by the decrease of start-up cost but weakened by the increase of supply risk.