Benefits of Persistence in Aspects of Patenting Strategy

Although some firms followed persistent patterns of patenting activity over time, results from the technology-intensive electronics industry indicated that patenting may have only a fungible competitive effect, i.e., frequent patenting has become an activity that raises the ticket of admission to compete therein without necessarily improving firms’ relative financial returns. Results also suggested that persistence in filing many patents was helpful to improving performance within electronics, as was having radical patent antecedents. Having above– average numbers of uncited patents was associated with an external indicator of firms’ efforts to amass patent thickets and associated with increasing firm profitability. Resource recommendations from results are mixed since patenting persistence has an effect on performance, but some types of patenting activity appear to have diminishing returns.