Intellectual property management in digitalizing businesses
When industries digitalize new challenges and opportunities for intellectual property management (IPM) arise. Swedish companies in industries that digitalize must, for example, learn to handle new digital technologies and the related intellectual property rights (IPRs). Further, increasing collaboration in ecosystems, standards, and various forms of open innovation is often necessary to take full advantage of digital technologies. In addition, new forms of intellectual property and IPRs, such as data and rights to data, also increase in importance. Altogether this leads to increasing importance of and challenges for IPM on various product, service, technology, data, IPR, and capital markets, for both small and large companies.
The purpose of this research project is therefore to explore and explain the role of IPM for various business strategies in order to create sustainable innovativeness and competitiveness in Swedish companies in connection to digitalization. The method of the project includes a large number of in-depth case studies of Swedish firms, complemented with economic experiments and interviews with venture capitalists. The project is specifically designed to develop new knowledge that is relevant for and applicable to Swedish companies, since the aim of the project is (1) to develop new knowledge, methods, and models for IPM, and (2) to diffuse this knowledge to Swedish companies in order to contribute to their competitiveness.
The project will run over two years, from late 2016 to late 2018.