Joint patenting amongst companies - exploring the effects of inter-firm R&D partnering and experience

R&D alliances and previous experience with the sharing of intellectual property rights are expected to have significant effects on joint patenting by alliance partners. Although so far un-researched, this is both an intuitively and theoretically appealing subject because joint patenting could relate to the possible outcome of an important group of alliances. However, the main explanation for differences in joint patenting of R&D partners is found in their experience with the joint patenting process itself. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.