A framework for assessing a portfolio of technologies for licensing out

Companies invest in R&D to create and exploit new opportunities. In recent years, leading innovative companies have attempted to establish a market for technologies and create leveraging opportunities through such markets. In this paper, we consider the question of how a firm can evaluate its patent portfolio for licensing purposes. To this end, we propose an approach that enables large corporations to scrutinize their portfolio of (patented) technologies and to subsequently set up royalty rate values to support the negotiation process of a particular technology. We use case-based research to develop our approach, which we illustrate with an in-depth assessment of 50 technologies. We conclude by discussing the pros and cons of our approach and its potential generalization to other companies and considering how it can be used to indicate value drivers for R&D strategy.