연구개발투자와 특허경영의 인과구조

Abstract

Recently, both technology innovation by R&D investment and securing intellectual property by patent management have become core components for a company’s sustainable growth, therefore, R&D investment and patent management are major variables for a company when making primary decisions for their business activities. Using reciprocal-feedback analysis, this paper explains how R&D investment would accumulate knowledge in technology which would in turn affect patent creations, and the number of patents could also raise the company’s profit by enhancing the company’s performance in mid-long term business activities. The results of this process show that surplus profits would be reinvested in R&D. The objective of this paper is to find the efficiency-oriented operation in R&D and improve the capabilities of company’s patent management by utilizing the accumulated knowledge and controlling the limiting factors in both internal and external resources. This research attempts to use the new conceptual structure based on the theory of dynamic technology innovation throughout the causal loop diagram (CLD) analysis and reviews the feedback process of strategic patent management. This research would help to construct strategic policies to be used in the business field. It also reveals the efficient patent management process by investigating the reciprocal relationship between R&D strategies and innovation strategies. This paper will approach in a strategic way how to regard to the company's patent management with the variables related to this process by providing a feedback process of technological innovation and patent management. It will also suggest a way to find an optimized way of patent management with the specific tactical strategies to be performed in the field. In order for the company to take a winning position in the market, they should make a plan with a strategy to utilize the efficient patent management to strengthen their core competitiveness. To carry out strategic patent management to improve the company’s core competencies in intellectual property, the success factors can be mainly divided into two parts, one aspect is the company’s willingness to perform patent management and other is the government’s intention to support the company with technology. First, as this paper mentioned earlier, active R&D investment for developing both key patents and the standardization of patents is the first step for improving patent competencies for the company's benefit. By setting a standard for measuring patents, the company can protect their intellectual property from the patent disputes within the industry. Also, thorough market research is a significant factor to prevent patent disputes. Second, it is crucial to construct a patent portfolio by investing in R&D, which would bring both qualitative and quantitative improvement. One of the ways to improve the level of its quality and stimulate to practice active uses of patents are creating patents which are suitable for industry standards, then, the company should produce products and services from their patent pools. Third, getting international recognition is also key for preventing patent disputes in the domestic market. If the patents are certified internationally, the company would have a definite advantage in lawsuits in the domestic market. Additionally, possessing a majority of the patents related to their field compared with their competitors is also advantageous for a company. The role of government and subsidiary organizations related to patents is also important in the active practice of strategic patent management within a company’s system, Especially, small & medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face difficulties to set up a patent management system due to insufficient budgets. The government should grant funds to vitalize construction of a patent system for technology improvement. By providing a variety of information related to specialized patents, SMEs could increase their assets by transferring unworthy technologies to valuable intellectual property. This system could also help stimulate SMEs to create new patents . Accordingly, this paper mainly analyzed how R&D investment affects the patent management system for sustainable growth. This research focused on two different perspectives based on previous studies of R&D investment, technology innovation, and patents which have been improved from this study. First, technology innovation starts from R&D investment, and then the R&D activities increases intangible assets like intellectual property such as knowledge and patents. These intangible assets would stimulate process innovation by improve productivity so that the company can react faster to customer’s needs while maintaining outstanding quality and lowering product cost. Increasing intangible assets would also stimulate product innovation, which would enable the company to launch innovative products which would increase market share. The result of this process increases the company’s net profits, which enables companies to be sustainable. This process explains that the excess profits from technology innovation would induce beneficial circular process by reinvesting the profits for further R&D research and improvement. This technology innovation creates the following cycle:, R&D investment → accumulate knowledge in technology or patents → product innovation → process innovation → produce the new product/service → increase the company’s profit → reinvesting profits in R&D. Therefore, it proves that increased knowledge in technology through innovation, which can be explained as the ‘patent’, would increase the firm’s value. Second, patents achieved by R&D activities can be protected by law, so that the company can expect additional profits by controlling market entry by restricting imitations from competitors. Acquiring many of the key and standard patents through R&D investment would also bring about an increase in profits. These profits also increase the company’s bargaining power in regards to patents by allowing the company to take the advantageous position in patent disputes or lawsuits. Since the company has the bargaining power in patents, it could minimize their costs within those activities. Also, they can also form a cartel with enterprises that have similar patents, so they can put a check on new company or product entries, or earn additional profits by selling the company owned patents to others. The key point of this paper is to provide a reciprocal feedback structure of strategic patent management, which is a significant issue to operate a company. In detail, it shows a beneficial circular process in regards to a patent strategy that starts from R&D investment, to patent management, to market effects of patents, to create profits, to re-investment in R&D resources. Although previous studies analyzed the relationship between R&D and technology innovation in a fragmentary or static way such as explaining R&D investment itself, stating the value of patents, or indicating a firm’s performance, this paper describes R&D investment with feedback analysis with an expanded perspective to overcome the limitations of existing studies.