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Abstract
This paper theorizes about innovation governance, especially about governance of open innovation and the nature and role of IPRs. A reinterpretation of open innovation is offered in terms of the emergence of various types of markets for inputs to and outputs from innovative activities. These open innovation markets are typically markets for ideas, technologies, knowledge and data such as licensing markets, equity markets, and matching markets for innovation collaborations and correspond to various types of open innovation strategies viewed from the inside out in a focal firm's perspective. Open innovation – seen as a set of quasi-integrated organizational forms for innovative activities in between market and hierarchical firm organizations – is then explainable in terms of determinants of supply and demand. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) then play a new role as tools for innovation governance, thereby economizing on governance costs in an extended transaction cost framework. Licensing of usage rights is key to using IPRs for innovation governance. The by now standard property rights approach to rights in intellectual resources has to be challenged, however, and referred to as 'intellectual rights' rather than IPRs. In addition, the governing role of IPRs can be improved by combining them with liabilities into a hybrid approach. Organizational responsibilities provide still another institutional arrangement for innovation governance, and integration of rights, liabilities and responsibilities provide a new theoretical perspective on innovation governance – a perspective that also can provide links between organization theory, transaction cost economics and property rights theory.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate firms' motives to patent in general, and more specifically how some of these motives depend upon firms' technology strategies and especially their level of open innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a questionnaire survey sent to chief technology officers (or equivalent) of the largest R&D spenders among Swedish large firms (e.g. ABB, AstraZeneca, Ericsson, and Volvo) and among Swedish small and medium-sized enterprises. Principal component analysis and multiple linear regressions were used to check the impact from open innovation upon the importance of 21 different motives to patent, with a specific focus on protection and bargaining related motives.FindingsThe most important motive to patent is to protect product technologies, but protecting freedom to operate is almost as important, followed by a number of other motives. Increasing importance of open innovation in firms is related to stronger bargaining motives to patent, and even stronger protection motives. In fact, when comparing with closed innovation, the results show that open innovation is more strongly positively related with all different motives to patent except for one (to attract customers). This indicates that firms find it more important to patent when engaged in open innovation than when engaged in closed innovation.Originality/valueThe paper reports results from the first study that links patenting motives to technology strategies. It contributes to an emerging stream of empirical studies investigating the role of patents in external technology strategies and open innovation, showing that the motives to patent are strengthened within open innovation settings.