Fairness in intellectual property valuation and value-sharing

Towards fair pricing in technology trade and licensing

Abstract

In today’s complex and digital business landscape, innovation is typically not an effort of a lonely genius or an activity confined to a single corporate R&D lab. Instead, the innovation process often involves open innovation, technology trade, and intellectual property (IP) licensing between multiple firms in what is sometimes referred to as an innovation ecosystem. While this interaction is conducive to value creation, it also creates a pressing need for better methods and principles for fairly capturing and sharing value among contributors. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the plurality and specificity of fairness principles, how they appear in IP negotiation experiments with 105 participants, and what outcomes they generate compared to competitive behavior. The paper especially highlights how investments and the structure of innovation actors, artifacts (such as patents), and activities impact fairness.