No 2015/23 Infringement of Intellectual Property in Innovation Partnerships

Abstract

Using data from the German Community Innovation Survey (CIS) from 2008 we analyze whether innovation partnering increases the risk of experiencing infringement of intellectual property (IP). The results show that depending on types of IP innovation partnerships increase the risk of infringement by up to 37% compared to the average risk in the sample. The results suggest that this massive increase can be reduced by intellectual property rights and contracts to govern the partnerships. Yet we show that formal protection mechanisms do not eliminate the sources of opportunistic infringement, since that infringement in innovation partnerships more commonly relates to the infringement of formally unprotected intellectual property, such as tacit knowledge and know-how.