A Survival Analysis on Fuel Cell Technology Patent Maintenance and Values Exploration between 1976 and 2001

Fuel cell R&D activities desirably arrive in patents; the costly maintenance fee challenges managers as well as researchers to whether or not renew existing patents. The key is, will the fuel cell patent’s value be worth renewing? Thus assessment of patent value is essential. Our study focus online searching was made available after 1976, as the initial year to conduct the patent search. Up to 2001, there are 2269 patents classified in the H01M 008/00~H01M 008/24 category, which is the category concerning fuel cell under the classification of the International Patent Classification. Effective exploitation of technology values is subject to the complementarities of organizational resources. The present study used the emerging technology of Fuel Cells as an example to show that firms may commercialize the values of technology according to their organizational resources. By aligning firms’ patenting strategies and the imparities between book values and market values this study concludes a technological ambidexterity with respect to firms’ technology development. The exploitative firms tend to file patents to defend their leadership in the product market as a result their technology is constrained within a firm’s boundaries. The results show that patent renewing decisions are consequence of firm’s constraints of complementary resources