Commercialisation of inventions from a legal and business perspective

This thesis is about university spin-offs and the competition in high technology industries. In the light of efforts to increase the competitiveness of the European Union, an effective transfer of cutting edge technology from universities to the industry plays an important role. University spin-offs, start-ups founded to exploit academic inventions, are likely to face considerable market entry barriers. This is among other reasons due to high capital requirements for further technology development and lack of complementary resources. With a combination of relevant literature and empirical investigation, commercialisation of technologies within spin-offs is investigated and analysed. Interviews with founders and CEOs of spin-offs from Lund University provide valuable information about the process itself, the success factors, obstacles, future steps etc. Together with theoretical findings, insights about the development of spin-offs, necessary resources and capabilities as well as commercialisation strategies are gained. Moreover, an alternative way of exploiting a technology is examined: license agreements with established firm. The technology market concept as a legal tool to assess technology transfers between partners is presented and illustrated with case law. Based on insights from the case studies, its applicability on competition in high technology industries is analysed and some weaknesses are revealed