Corporate technology out-licensing: Motives and scope

Recently, technology licensing has become a broader trend in many industrial companies. As this increase has not been sufficiently reflected by research, we lack a detailed understanding of the motives for corporate technology out-licensing. Moreover, the insights into the current scope of corporate out-licensing activities are strongly limited. Therefore, this paper presents the results of a questionnaire-based study into the patent and non-patent technology out-licensing activities of 154 European firms across industries. Thus, the present study provides large-scale empirical evidence for the current scope of corporate out-licensing activities. In addition, it deepens our understanding of corporate out-licensing strategies by examining in detail the motives of firms for licensing out technology. After an introduction to the topic, the design of the empirical study is described. Then, the results of the survey are presented, and implications for theory and practice are discussed.