专利保护背景下的技术供应链授权合同设计研究

Optimal Licensing Contracts of Technology Supply Chain with Patent Protection

为研究不对称信息下跨国最优技术授权合同设计问题,以外国企业为授权方,本国企业为被授权方,构建不完全信息博弈模型来分析外国企业的最优技术授权合同设计及其选择条件,进而考察授权合同选择、本国企业生产规模不经济等对技术授权、社会福利的影响。在此基础上,考虑本国企业选择生产外包与本国企业生产规模经济情形,对原始模型进行延伸和拓展分析。研究发现:分离合约是外国企业的最优选择,并且会策略性地选择固定收费形式或者双重收费形式的跨国授权合同;本国企业生产规模不经济并不会影响外国企业对跨国授权合同形式的选择,但会促使本国企业降低产品产量,产品价格上升;规模不经济对各个企业利润的影响取决于市场条件,但却总是会导致消费者剩余和社会福利的损失。本国企业选择生产外包与本国企业生产规模经济不会影响外国企业对跨国授权合同形式的选择,但会影响外国企业和本国企业的均衡决策。

With the rapid growth of international trade,technology licensing cooperation between enterprises is becoming more and more popular.However,in the process of transnational technology licensing,unreasonable licensing contracts make it easy for the companies to occur patent infringement disputes.In this context,the following questions are studied:1)in transnational technology licensing,how should the licensor design and choose the form of the technology license contract?2)How should production diseconomies of licensee and information asymmetry affect the design of technology license contract for licensor?3)How should the design of technology license contract and the domestic enterprise's production diseconomies affect social welfare?Taking the foreign enterprise as licensor and the domestic enterprise as licensee,production scale diseconomy of domestic enterprise and information asymmetry about market demand are taken into account,and then games with incomplete information are constructed to investigate the optimal design of transnational technology licensing contract problem.On this basis,the conditions for choosing the form of transnational technology licensing contract are analyzed,and the influence of production scale diseconomy of domestic enterprise on social welfare is investigated.By solving and analyzing the constructed model,the optimal technology licensing contract and output decision under pooling equilibrium and separating equilibrium are found.Firstly,compared with the only choice of two-tariff contract to technology licensing under the pooling equilibrium,the foreign enterprise can strategically design fixed-fee contract or two-tariff contract under the separating equilibrium;Secondly,the production diseconomies of the domestic enterprise does not affect the choice of license form of the foreign enterprise,but it will prompt the domestic enterprise to reduce the output of the product and increase the price of the product.Moreover,the impact of production diseconomies on the performance of technical supply chain members depends on market conditions,but it always leads to the loss of consumer surplus and social welfare.Finally,the domestic enterprise's production outsourcing and the domestic enterprise's production economies of scale are considered to expand the analysis of this paper.The results show that,the domestic enterprise's production outsourcing and the domestic enterprise's production economies of scale will not affect the patent licensing form choice of the patent provider.Nevertheless,the impact of production outsourcing on the equilibrium of technology supply chain is uncertain,and scale economies will bring positive externalities to technology supply chain,that is the profit levels of the domestic enterprise and the foreign enterprise will increase.This paper also has some limitations.In order to focus on the design of transnational technology licensing contracts,the description of information asymmetry in domestic market demand is simplified.Therefore,when studying the problems of technology licensing in the supply chain,more influencing factors can be further considered,and the continuous random function can be used to describe information asymmetry in product market demand or disruption in demand/supply.