Pursuant to “The technology transfer service regulation" issued by Beijing Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision in 2011, Technology transfer refers to the process of transferring certain systematic knowledge of certain products manufacturing, technology application, or providing services, from the suppliers to the demanders.
Technology transfer services refer to services of all types we provide to accelerate the whole process of technology transfer, including transaction in technology, evaluation of technology, technology integration and technology operation, etc. When it comes to “technology transfer”, foreign researchers would think of that as in the field of scientific work, that is the technology transaction is made in certain forms from one place to another, for examples, between countries, or from “birthplace of technologies” (research constitutes) to the demanders(enterprises and business operating constitutes, or between the demanders.
Things That Matter in Technology Transfer Cost
The first thing to be considered would be the essential resources as well as the patent royalties or rent involved in the transaction, which includes:
First, the technical exchange cost in preliminary projects. During the exchange, basic characteristics of the technologies should be demonstrated to the assignees, from an imperative theoretical point of view.
Second, engineering cost related to design and production of products in the process innovation. If the technology has been commercialized before the transaction, a large amount of consulting resources would be needed in the process.
Third, researching cost throughout the transaction, including salary and expenditure on accidental problems, and applying or remoulding fee.
Forth, training cost for initiating the transaction and “excess manufacturing cost”, which is for study and piloting of the technology before initiating.
Technology transfer
The understanding of technology and intangible assets is of vital importance of forming and managing technical strategies.
Standardization
There is a simple relationship between standardization and transfer of technology. The more standardization in the technology or experience of a project, the more parts of it can be transferred, at least economically.
Conspicuousness in the application
Technologies in many fields could be applied in public studies, reverse engineering, for example, could be one channel of extracting the technologies. It is an inevitable crucial fact.
Positive/negative technologies
The economic value of technology depends not only on its ultimate practicability, but also on its transfer and reproduction. A technology that can be copied could be expanded and applied to any other new environment too. Replicability and assignability are closely related. If a technology could be transferred from one area to another, or from a product market environment to another product market environment, the technology can create more value. However, if it is very easy to transfer a technology, it could easily be obtained by the competitors using just simple imitation as well.
Copy
Copy of the patented technologies means the transfer or redistribution of the competition from one economic environment to another.
Imitation
Imitation is the copy conducted by competitors. If it’s difficult with “self-copy” already, then the imitation would be difficult accordingly. As in such a dog-eat-dog market environment today, the difficulty of imitation resolves the sustainability of the competition advantage. Easiness of imitation could cause great reduction of profit.
Specificity
Specificity is not only about the character of technology and difficulty of copy, but also in use of setting obstacles in IP copies. When a certain technology is difficult to be copied substantially, especially with the protection of law, the specificity would be more intensive accordingly.
License
License Drafting Strategy
- What exactly can be licensed: patents, trademarks, copyright, trade secret or anything else?
- What kinds of rights are there of licensed patents: manufacturing right, right to use, power of sale, right to display or right of distribution?
- When licensed, will there be exclusiveness or non-exclusiveness, or both?
- Any limits like territorial limitation or domain constraints?
- What financial factors are included: pre-payment, advance payment, patent royalties, guaranteed lowest cost?
- Deadlines.
- Claims and warranty clauses.
- Indemnity clause.
- Quality control.
- Sublicense.
- End/default process
Negotiation strategies of license agreement
Intellectual properties tend to be overvalued by their owner, especially the inventor. The potential licensee, on the other hand, would lay their emphasis on the risk adverse more often. Hence there will be adjustable value space that should be recognized in the first place, and more importantly over which a way of compromise would be figured out by the two parties to make the deal. Kinhalo has years of experiences of advising on IP negotiations and agreements, pursuing the highest profits in a win-win cooperation for the clients.
Executive strategies of IP agreements
Procedures that are necessarily needed in monitoring the licenses fees reports can be neglected by the licensers, for example they may have their revenue unchecked as stated, which causes losses in return. Periodic inspections should be involved in a professional compliance program, including analysis of the license fee in the past, comparison of the published financial reports and the study of internet information, etc. The audit terms in the subsequent license agreement are then completed on-site audit. And then the two groups of data obtained by the analysis, drawing the final conclusion.