Projects

Management of Intellectual property rights in shared digital environments

Aims

To improve our understanding of how firms and customer organisations manage their Intellectual Property Rights when using ICTs to share technical data in the context of R&D and production collaboration.
To investigate how, and under what conditions, IPR issues affect the development of `shared digital environments´ (SDEs) among large supply networks and will recommend practices and policies to improve IPR managements in such contexts.
The study will focus on the defence industries, as they provide a leading example of an area where the complexity and cost of product design, manufacture and support are increasingly leading firms & their customers to rely on information networks networks to collaborate and share data.

Methodology

To develop a structure checklist of IPR management issues and their possible effects on SDE deployment. The checklist will be used as a research instrument in our field research, which will follow a case study methodology to analyse a sample of large collaborative projects.

Keywords

IPR management, shared digital environment, smart procurement

Publications

Project is contributing towards publications already in the pipeline. "Technology moulding law: What impact on innovation?" prepared by Puay Tang is to be submitted to Technology Analysis and Strategic Management.

Another article "IPR considerations in life-cycle defence contracts" is being prepared by Jordi Molas, Puay Tang and Andy Davies.

Jordi Molas-Gallart and Puay Tang. “Ownership matters: Intellectual Property and the privatization of British defense research establishments” Research Policy. Forthcoming 2005.

Jordi Molas-Gallart and Puay Tang “Privatisation and the management of Intellectual Property Rights: the case of the British defence research establishments” in B. Laperche, J. Galbraith and D. Uzunidis eds.  “Innovation, Evolution and Economic Change. New ideas in the Tradition of Galbraith”. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, forthcoming.

Puay Tang and Jordi Molas-Gallart. “Intellectual Property and Inter-organizational collaborative networks: navigating the maze” SPRU Electronic Working Paper No. 130. Brighton: SPRU 2005.  (pdf)

Puay Tang and Jordi Molas-Gallart. Securing Intellectual Property in collaborative environments: a guide Brighton: SPRU, University of Sussex, 2005. (pdf)