Research on Strategy to integrate Intellectual Property Management with Product Development Process

本研究旨在建立一个整合知识产权管理与产品开发过程的企业战略框架，并明确知识产权部门的组织结构将适合于实现整合战略。作为针对这种整合战略的一个突出案例，我们关注制药企业的知识产权生命周期管理。2004年，我们对191家日本制药企业进行了问卷调查，获得了64家企业的回答。通过对这些样本数据的分析，以下一点变得清晰起来。由于新产品的开发需要投入大量的研发费用，如何从自主创新中获取利润成为制药企业的重要课题。因此，大多数大企业已经加强了对知识产权的生命周期管理。这种参与实际上对产品生命周期的延长和对仿制产品的排斥产生了影响。在此过程中，通过建立正式的项目团队等，试图加强跨职能关系。虽然创新企业对创新利润的可支配性提高了，但由于战略阻碍了新技术的扩散，整个产业的创新有可能被推迟。为了验证这一点，我们使用日本专利局的“知识产权相关活动调查”数据，分析了“专利丛林”存在的可能性。结果表明，专利丛林的可能性在过去三年中逐渐清晰，但它仍然没有被观察到作为一个严重的阻碍创新的因素。

This research aimed to make a corporate strategic framework to integrate the intellectual property management with the product development processes, and to clarify the organizational structure of intellectual property division will be suitable to accomplish the integration strategy. We paid attention to the life cycle management of intellectual property in the pharmaceutical firms as a remarkable case which aiming at such integration strategy.We conducted a questionnaire survey targeting 191 Japanese pharmaceutical firms, and acquired the responses from 64 firms in 2004. The following point became clear by our analysis based on these sample data. It becomes the important subject of big pharmaceutical firms that to appropriate the profit from their own innovation, because a large sum of R&D expenditure should be necessary for the new product development. Therefore, most of the big firms have already strengthened engaging to life cycle management of the intellectual property. The engaging actually exerts effect on extension of product life cycle and the exclusion of the generic products. And, strengthening of cross-functional relationship is being attempted in the process by the establishment of the formal project team and so on.While the appropriability of the profit from innovation is raised for the innovative firms, it has the possibility that an innovation is delayed in the industry as a whole, because the strategy obstructs the diffusion of the new technology. To verify this point, we analyzed the possibility of the existence of "patent thicket" by using the data of the Japan Patent Office "Survey of Intellectual Property-Related Activities". It was shown that the possibility of patent thickets clear gradually during the past three years though it is not still observed as a serious hampering factor for innovation.