| With the advent of the information age, the software industry as the essential part of information and communication industry and the foundation of the national economy informationization has become the focus of international competition and the strategic leading industry of countries. In order to stimulate technological innovation in software industry, Germany and China have been gradually granting patents to software related inventions. Because of many characteristics of software technology innovation, software patenting behavior of enterprises and influencing factors are very different from those in other technical areas. However, there is little systematic analysis on this issue.Therefore, software patenting behavior and influencing factors in German and Chinese software enterprises are taken as the subject of this paper. Based on in-depth analysis of previous studies, motivations and influencing factors of software patenting behavior in enterprises are extracted, by integrated use of theories of law, economics and management. A theoretical analysis model is established and a series of reasonable assumptions are proposed. Based on this model, an empirical study is conducted in Germany and China. The research findings validated these assumptions, some theoretical and practical conclusions and recommendations are made.First, based on the analyzing of motivations and influencing factors of software enterprises patenting behavior, this paper established enterprises' software patenting decision making model. It pointed out that the legal environment, firm size and product type are key influencing factors of patenting behavior in software enterprises. By quantitative analyzing the result of empirical study, degree of influence factors are determined. With interactive analysis, it found that legal environment, firm size and product type are significantly correlated with the number of software patent applications applied by German and Chinese enterprises.Secondly, with comparing on the development and evolvement of patent law legislation, case law and examination practice on software inventions in Germany and China, this paper took in-depth analysis on software patent application data in Germany and China between 1990 to 2008, found that legal environment is the direct influencing factor of enterprises behavior; a stable legal environment is more able to activate enterprises' software patenting. In addition, firm size and product type are significantly correlated with enterprises' software patenting behavior, although the legal environment, policy environment, awareness of patent protection in enterprises between Germany and China are different, impacts of firm size and product type on software patenting behavior between German and Chinese enterprises are of high similarity. Based on this, this paper considered firm size and product type as independent factors. They won't be affected by legal environment and other factors.Finally, based on the result of theoretical analysis and empirical study, this paper figured out that patenting behavior is a strategic decision making in software enterprises affected by enterprises' internal objectives and external conditions. Internal objectives and external conditions are two important dimensions of enterprises' strategic software patenting decision making, based on this a model is established. By considering the legal environment, firm size and product type, these three key influencing factors, with the combination of the main motives of themselves, enterprises can make decision according to this model. The practicality and effectiveness of this model are also proved by the empirical study. Six successful software patenting strategies of enterprises are summed up. |
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