Interrelation between patenting and standardisation strategies: empirical evidence and policy implications

This paper analyses the relationship between strategies to protect intellectual property rights and their impact on the likelihood of joining formal standardisation processes. It is based on a small sample of European companies. On the one hand, theory suggests that the stronger the protection of own technological know-how, the higher the likelihood to join formal standardisation processes in order to leverage the value of the technological portfolio. On the other hand, companies at the leading edge are often in such a strong position that they do not need the support of standards to market their products successfully. The results of the Probit models to explain the likelihood to join standardisation processes support the latter theoretical hypothesis: the higher the patent intensities of companies, the lower is their tendency to join standardisation processes. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.