The Patent Behavior Of Standard Founders In The Development Of Technical Standards

With the acceleration of technological progress and the increasing complexity of technology, technical standards are exceeding the scope of technical specifications to citing patents. In high-tech areas such as the information and communication industry, technical standards based on patents are gradually increasing, which make the patent behavior of founders play an important role in the evolution of technical standards. Meanwhile, patents incorporated into standards are increasing rapidly, which make the related patent holders grow fast. The patent behavior of founders of standards is becoming more complex, which is urgent to carry out in-depth study.The literature review is written on the theory of technical standards, patents incorporated in technical standards and patent analysis methods, which provide support for the selection of research question and research methods. On the basis of the above research, the hypothesis was put forward in connection with the existing problems and three issues were carried out as follows. Firstly, the patent application behavior of standard founders is studied based on patent map so as to explore the relationship between patent application behavior and the establishment of technical standards. Secondly, taking patents citation among founders as a breakthrough, the patent citation network of standard founders is measured with centrality index using social network analysis method. Thirdly, the patent declaration behavior of standard founders during the evolution of technical standards is studied through the large sample regression with the patent value index.The research of patent application behavior of founder shows that making patent applications of technology own by standard founders provide technological basis for the establishment of technical standards under the background of technical standards citing patents. The leading enterprises of technical proposals are the core in the correlation relationship of standard founders and play key roles in the standards establishment. The patents which standard founders own related to technical standards not only establish the early foundation for technical standards but also determine the future evolution of standards. The standard founders tend to form alliances in the standards establishment, which make these enterprises have a strong technical correlation. The research of patent citation network of founders show that there is a closely connected network with high cohesion among the assignees related to technical standards due to the technical complexity and the formation of patent thickets, which promote the development of technical standard proposals and the industrialization of technical standards. A small number of assignees have control over the citation relationship which strengthens the control ability of recourses related to technical standards for the leading enterprises. Highly cited assignees are the formation basis of the citation network and play important roles in standards-setting process.The research of patent declaration behavior of founders shows that there is a peak of patents declaration around the establishment of technical standards. There is a great many of patent declarations after standards were established, which are controlled by the first-movers. The regression analysis of large data sets show that the patent value of first-movers is lower than that of newcomers after the technical standards were established, which demonstrates that there are strategic declarations of first-movers during the evolution of technical standards. The first-movers try to pad the low value patents into the technical standards.