Title
Business value of Intellectual Property in Biotech SMEs: case studies of Lithuanian and Arizona’s (US) firms
Abstract
The paper presents the limited quantitative and qualitative analysis of the biotechnology industries in Lithuania and Arizona (US) focusing on the role of intellectual property for the business income of the small and medium firms (SMEs). The paper also discussed theoretical aspects of the role of intellectual property in the biotech SMEs, presents empirical data on the SME intellectual property holding, employment and income data in Lithuania and Arizona based on the conducted case analysis. In depth analysis of the intellectual property, employment and revenue profile and correlations of the selected biotechnology firms are provided. Case analysis focused on patents, which are dominant and easy to study public form of intellectual property in biotechnology firms. Arizona biotechnology firms were found to especially capitalize on patents, even if the number of employees is small, while in Lithuania biotechnology firms appear to lack clear focus on on patents and instead have non-innovative intellectual property, such as trademarks. This trend is the strongest in the small firms (by the number of employees). Analysis suggests that business value of intellectual property is much higher in Arizona, and is not sufficiently ascertained in Lithuania. Analysis also shows that biotech SMEs in the US benefit from the patent focus and derive significant business value from patents, while the benefits of dispersed approach to intellectual property in Lithuania are uncertain. The authors suggest that biotech SMEs in Europe may benefit from focused patenting.
Keywords
intellectual property, patents, technology, biotechnology, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)
JEL classifications
K39 , L26 , L65
URI
http://jssidoi.org/jesi/article/101
DOI
Pages
221-234
Funding
The article is published under the research, which is funded by Lithuanian Research Council under the measure "Support to Researcher Teams' Projects" (grant No. MIP-14446, name of the project "Research of Biotechnology SME's Intellectual Property Strategies").This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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