Chapter 5: Open Innovation and Intellectual Property: The Relationship and its Challenges

The legal implications that may result from incautious intellectual property strategies that firms may adopt to manage their intellectual property associated with their in-bound innovation and out-bound innovation could be serious. Licensing out, licensing in, and cross-licensing strategies as well as the strategy of intellectual property acquisition are based on a complicated legal framework the understanding of which by intellectual property managers in open innovation firms is essential to prevent any negative implications on firms’ ability to protect their intellectual property and/or to avoid intellectual property based liability. This chapter identifies and analyses the intellectual property law challenges that are associated with some aspects of inbound and outbound open innovation, specifically intellectual property assignment / acquisition and intellectual property licensing.