Intellectual Property Strategy in the Context of Inter-organizational Relations: the Case of International Agricultural Research

In recent decades, intellectual property (IP) strategy has become a more prominent part of the management of many organizations. This chapter demonstrates the complexity of IP strategy. Using a taxonomy of inter-organizational relations, we discuss the IP strategies of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR, or CG for short). However, the core content of this chapter is methodological and has much wider applicability. Our ideas apply to non-profit and for-profit organizations as well as to other aspects of strategic management, such as funding, partnering, and technology positioning.

The CGIAR, formed in 1971, and its 16 research centres (CG Centres), played a pivotal role in the Green Revolution, thanks in part to a global network of transfers of data, genetic resources, and technologies. In the 1990s, proliferating IP claims caused CG policy makers to become increasingly concerned about the functioning of this network. The Centres’ freedom to operate in research and development (R&D) could no longer be taken for granted. In response, the CG’s Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property (CAS-IP) was established in 1999, and several Centres began hiring IP specialists.

Three underlying themes run through this chapter: partnerships, technology positioning and segmentation. Partnerships can be defined as medium-term cooperative interorganizational relations. Examples include repeated transfers of R&D inputs or outputs, repeated funding and joint R&D projects. Partnerships tend to reward cooperation and punish non-cooperation.

Technology positioning is a crucial determinant of each Centre’s inter-organizational relations. The CG System and its Centres are (or ought to be) constantly reassessing their role in the global division of labour in agricultural R&D. Technologies may be either vertically or horizontally related. They are vertically related if one technology enables another, either physically or conceptually. Horizontal relations between technologies include the opposites of complementarity – implying synergistic effects of combining the technologies – and substitutability – implying that alternative technologies may be used with similar results. Some types of technology relations appear to have ‘natural’ counterparts in inter-organizational relationship types. For example, substitutability between two technologies may be associated with competition, although it may also be associated with collaboration or exchange. Suppose A is an established technology (say, sexual reproduction of hybrid crop varieties) while technologyB (say, apomixis as applied to hybrids) is a new and potentially competing technology. Firms that control A may seek to purchase the rights to B, or may seek collaboration to secure access to B. This example, taken from a collaborative agreement of the International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center (CIMMYT), illustrates the complexity of the link between technology relations and inter-organizational relations.

Segmentation of markets and clients is important in partnerships between for-profits and non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations want their client groups to benefit from R&D products on concessional terms, while for-profit organizations want to minimize those concessional terms with respect to their most lucrative markets. Various criteria may be used for segmenting markets (CGIAR, 1998; Falcon, 2000; Byerlee and Fischer, 2001; Nottenburg et al. , 2002).