Process patent: the role they can play in the transformation from a research institute to a research company

Abstract

Approximately a decade ago, the Swedish research institutes transformed to private corporate entities due to a decision from the Swedish government. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the role that process patents can play during this transformation for the pulp and paper research sector. For this, we have focused our analysis on the relation and dependence between the business strategy and the patent strategy to enable such a transformation. The results indicate that process patents are problematic tools for business strategies to facilitate the transformation due to the difficulty in monitoring and proving infringement. The conclusion of the thesis is that process patents are not sufficient tools for business strategies to enable a good transformation; there is also a necessity for a close connection between the patent strategy and the business strategy combined with additional strategies to protect and extract value from surrounding knowhow.