Abstract
In the era of knowledge economy, the intellectual properties (IPs) play an important role for enterprises to keep competitiveness. The patents can help the enterprise to maintain its domain knowledge and avoid its specialized knowledge imitated by other competitors. Furthermore, enterprises can obtain more incomes by licensing their patents to other IP users. On the other hand, enterprises can also purchase patents from IP providers to reduce their R&D risk and to shorten the time to market. Therefore, patent valuation becomes a critical issue for enterprise R&D. Owing to the uniqueness characteristic of patents, it is hard for enterprises to establish a standard patent/technology valuation mechanism. As a result, the prices of patents should be determined via complicated negotiation processes between the IP provider and potential IP user. Therefore, this research develops an IP valuation model based on four indices including the IP provider, IP user, IP specifications and IP license specifications. The suggested price of an IP can also be determined via a regression model. In addition to the IP price reasoning model, in order to provide a trading channel for IP providers and potential IP users, this research also develop a web-based platform for IP valuation and trading based on the proposed IP valuation model. Under the IP trading platform, the IP providers and IP users can efficiently search and exchange patents to reduce search costs. Moreover, the platform can also provide the suggested IP prices to reduce the complicated negotiation processes. In the highly competitive global market, the proposed model and platform can significantly enhance IP trading performance and therefore the enterprise R&D tasks can be efficiently accomplished.