Exploring the key success factors for partner selection of intellectual property services industry

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), used to be an unfamiliar element for businesses, have gradually become an important operation. Firms are increasingly looking beyond their Intellectual Property (IP) and legal departments for patent intermediaries to manage their key IP issues. Even for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), IP management plays a crucial role. However, SMEs are run on limited resources and the management of IP assets is a complex task and few managers have the expertise as it generally requires a combination of legal, technical and business knowledge. In response to this situation, an IP Service Industry has emerged in recent years. However, there had cognitive and service gap between service provider and customer. The purpose of this paper is to explore the key success factors (KSFs) critical to the IP service industry. First, factors affecting the success of IP service providers had been found. Second, the factors were verified by interviews with practitioners of IP service provider. Then, a questionnaire was designed and sent to the IP service customers. The results show that “Technology Understanding”, “The Technical Professional Staff”, “Practical Experience on IPRs Infringement Litigation”, “Understanding the Market Traits of Industries”, “Accurate Interpretation of Market Trends”, “Provide Real-Time IP Information”, “Provide IP Deployment Strategy” and “Provide Customized IP Services” are the top eight KSFs demanded by the customers. The KSFs from customer perspective identified by this study will help IP service providers to enhance their competitive advantage and can be used as potential directions to offer customer-oriented services.