Clean technology industry: Relevance of patents and related service providers

Many clean technology transfer barriers have been associated to Intellectual Property (IP) rights. The objective of this chapter is to give insights to the types of IP rights services the clean technology industry needs to overcome. By conducting in-depth qualitative interviews with a convenience sample of 25 clean technology companies in 2012, most outsourced intellectual property-related services were discovered. The clean technology companies specified the following top three IP services required from service providers: legal services for IP protection, legal services for IP transactions, and IP consultancy (i.e. IP portfolio analyses). The companies investigated outsource IP-related processes to service providers. That leads to the conclusion that outsourcing patent-related activities is an efficient management decision for the clean technology industry. Outsourcing tasks to competent service providers who are familiar with foreign technology and legal markets were found to be especially useful against infringement threats from developing countries © 2015 by IGI Global.