Licensing in Outbound Open Innovation: Literature Review

This paper reviews the most recent literature concerning the licensing option in outbound open innovation. In this context, the literature has begun to refer to licensing specifically as outlicensing. Outlicensing provides a legal mechanism through which to protect intellectual property in the form of an innovation, secure supplemental revenue by granting licensees defined rights to use the innovation, and draw new ideas through relationships with other innovators in the industry. Outlicensing takes several forms, ranging from the standard variety of restrictive license to open-source licensing. The different forms of outlicensing may fit different strategies, governed by a combination of the company's vision and the dynamics of the industry. While the consensus in the literature is that innovative companies should integrate licensing activities into their marketing and engineering functions, rather than considering the outlicensing option only after the creation of the innovation, the problem remains that fewer companies currently exploit the benefits of outlicensing than have the opportunity to do so.