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Technology transfer methods

1. Trade secret:

A trade secret is like any formula, device, pattern, process, or the information that affords an
enterprise an advantages over others who do not know it. The information about the products
or new invention is not generally known to others but it has value. Trade secrets must be
maintained by avoiding public disclosure.
In contrast, know-how is a broader term that describes factual knowledge not usually
amenable to a precise description. Know-how is usually an accumulated knowledge as result
of trial and error. Know-how typically gives an enterprise the ability to produce something
that could not be produced as accurately or successfully without it. Know-how may include
trade secrets and cannot be protected or licensed unless it is first recorded in a tangible
medium.
Unlike patents, laws protects trade secrets. The laws allows the trade secret owner to
prosecute someone for unauthorized use, observation, or lack of adequate security measures,
the information moves into the public domain and loses protection under trade secret law.
Trade secrets are effective to protect product innovations that incorporate various
technological barriers to analysis, and process innovations that can be hidden from exposure.

2. To know what is patent


A patent does not give the inventor the right to practice his or her invention, only the right to
exclude others from doing so. The inventor is given exclusive use of the invention and the
right to assign that use. However, a grant of a patent has been found not to be useful for
excluding imitators and/or capturing royalty income in most industries.
A grant of a patent is often likely to offer little benefit to its holder. Patents gives the patentee
the right to exclude others from its use, but does not give the patentee the right to use the
patent if such use infringes on patents of others. The United States patent system places the
burden on the patentee to detect any infringers to sue for redress. A patent covers a particular
means of achieving a given end, but not the end itself, even if the end and, perhaps the market
it identifies, are novel.

3. Intellectual Property
Another method for transferring technology is to transfer Intellectual Property, which is an
intangible right that can be bought and sold, leased or rented, or otherwise transferred
between parties in much the same way that rights to real property or other personal property
can be transferred. Intellectual property can consist of patents, trade secrets, copyrights,
designs, know-how, and trademarks. The transfer of intellectual property rights is an
important and often substantial component of the technology transfer process. Intellectual

property rights are most often transferred through contracts or licenses. Window
blinds and window shades manufacturer said intellectual property transfer is most important
and substantial component.
4. To know about Inventions and patents
Invention is the act or process of discovering something new, physical or conceptual. A
United States patent is an agreement between the United States government and the inventor.
This agreement grants the inventor the right to exclude others from making, using or selling
the invention for a defined period of time within the United States. The patent law of the
United States Specifies that any person who Invents or discovers any new and useful
Process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful
improvements Thereof, may obtain a patent.

5. Maintain Good relation:


The most frequently stated objective of co-operative and collaborative alliances is to develop
or transfer new technologies. A worldwide trend is the use of partnership, strategic alliances,
and other collaborative mechanisms to alleviate difficulties in all aspects of technological
development. These partnerships provide faster and less costly methods to develop new
technology products processes and services, e.g., SEMATECH, a collaboration of members
of the United States Semiconductor industry. Co-operative R&D allow partners to reach
critical structures more rapidly for large complex technology projects, e.g., the European
Airbus Project.
Partnerships and strategic alliances allow merging of technological knowledge and skills
from multiple enterprises, improving innovation in the chosen technology. Bidault and
Cumings found that cross-industry alliances proved more innovative than alliances with
competitors. These cross-industry alliances occur more frequently than in the past. However,
these alliances have a high risk of failure and produce more incremental than radical
innovations.
Many characteristics of alliance are often in conflict with objectives of the technology
development originally envisioned.
Technology driven cooperative and collaborative alliances can be managed through various
enterprise structures. The strategic alliance all involves obtaining synergism through
leveraging mutual resources. This also achieves diversification risk and mutual learning or
technology transfer. Strategic alliances for technology transfer can be:

Technical exchanges

Cross-licensing

Co-Production

Marketing agreements

Joint product developments programs

Joint ventures with equity ownership

An enterprise can acquire or transfer technology through a number of formal mechanisms,


which include:

Co-operative and collaborative ventures

Licensing

Contracting

Enterprise acquisition

Co-operative and Collaborative Ventures


Co-operative and collaborative ventures are structures between two or more enterprises.
These ventures can take various organizational forms. One form of venture is through equity
in a jointly owned new enterprise. A general partnership is another form of venture where the
partners can be competitors suppliers, or customers. The partners do not need to be limited
to those within a single nation. Consortia consist of one or more enterprises including
universities, industry and federal laboratories. Strategic alliances are an organizational format
where two or more entities enter in to a formal agreement to jointly pursue certain
technological objectives. The term of the enterprise of partnership can be limited or unlimited
in duration. The degree of sharing resources can vary from little to total, or be limited to
specific aspects of the shared objectives. Collaboration, according to Tucci among
participants can take the form of research, exchanging proven technologies across single
product line, joint development of one of more products, and collaboration across marketing
and research.
Licensing
Licensing is the transfer of less than ownership rights in intellectual property to a third
party, to permit the third party to use intellectual property. Licensing can be exclusive or
non-exclusive, for a specific field of use, for a specific geographical area. If ownership is
transferred, it is called an assignment.
The transfer of technology through licensing is a useful method for capturing economic
rents of technological innovations. Small technology enterprises can benefit from
technological licensing. A small firm usually benefits more by licensing its technology
than trying to commercialize it. The commercialization of new technologies requires a
high expenditure of resources, generally beyond the means of many small
entrepreneurial enterprises. Small enterprises, according to Chung to benefit from
technological licensing, must overcome their initial naivete by concentrating on the
economic and strategic aspects of the process.
These small enterprises must broaden operational perspective, scope, and build
credibility and expertise. To further benefit from technological licensing, small
enterprises should improve exchange and interaction capabilities, and enhance
experience and responsibility.

Formal Processes
The formal processes of technology transfer are generally process-embodied or personembodied transfer within an overarching organizational framework. These processes include
outright procurement of a technology though its sale, licensing or acquisition of the enterprise
tin which the technology is embedded. Another formal process of technology transfer is
through formal agreements between governments, enterprises, individuals, research entities
such as laboratories, and academic institutions. In this instance, formal legal arrangements are
made, such as joint ventures, R & D consortia, co-operative agreements and other legal
instrumentality.
As our talk in technology transfer today we are going to discuss on methods of technology
transfer. There are number of methods for transferring technology, both informal and formal.
First we understand about the Informal process then we will understand the Formal process.
The formal processes are those which use legal arrangements between the participants in the
transfer process. The informal processes include the transfer of technology either with or
without the transferees knowledge or formal recognition that this knowledge is or has been
transferred.

Informal Processes
The informal processes of transferring technology include technical information exchange
though published matter, either printed or by electronic media, meetings, symposia and
individual exchanges. In this process the originator of the information makes the technical
information available through professional meetings, journals, articles, electronic exchange,
and informal meetings and personal communication. Technologists have sometimes
inadvertently exchanged valuable and sensitive technical information, which has led to
competitors capturing economic rents that rightly belonged to the initiator of the information
exchange. In some instances the knowledge of genetic code had been placed on-line in
electronic media such as the Internet only to be patented by others. Some time working group
want to transfer their work environment also with which they are working. Working group
want to transfer same interior design with the same vertical window blinds.

Reference

http://ttechnologytransfermanagement.wordpress.com

Technology Transfer

Not a single country cannot able to create or build an advanced Science and Technology
without TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER from other countries. The countries become advanced
if the technology transfer is done in both software and hardware forms and in terms of export
and import of technologies. In our case (Islamic Countries) we are mostly the importer of
technology, in its hardware form. Technology transfer in this context refers to the movement
of technological software and hardware from advanced countries to less advanced or
developing countries.

Which Technologies should be imported?


Technology based development involves needs assessment. Based on the identified needs, the
country has to determine which type of technologies to import, which technologies to
improve and which technologies to export. These above three categories contains various
degrees of technology transfer.
A decision is made to rely on technology import when
1. Innovations are ensured by licenses and when capital products required cannot be
delivered generally or does the interest by the residential business sector advocates
neighbourhood improvement and production.
2. Advances needs bigger ventures of cash and needs more of an opportunity to create.
Fare arranged innovations produce remote trade which is utilized for further engineering
based improvement. This is the most essential thing among the three. These fare arranged
innovations needs huge monetary and S&T human asset to create the national S&T
framework which assumes the liability of creating condition of-workmanship information for
the advances required.

Obviously, developing countries need to depend vigorously in the introductory phase


(initial stage) of innovation move regarding ability i.e. know-how, licensing, Joint venture,
and so on. As the national salary increment because of the incomes from sending out
advances, we can expand the work compensation of the labour likewise to enhance their
living principles.
The pervasive type of technology improvement in most Islamic nations calls for technology
import where an expansive share of capital products and buyer merchandise are transported
in. Traditional commercial enterprises are persistently depend on technology transfer leaving
the national S&T system confined from the process. Export oriented technologies are
basically constrained to mining and characteristic asset based assembling commercial
manufacturing industries. These additionally focused technology transfer, however

constrained in term of know-how. This demonstrates that export oriented domain is still little
in Islamic nations. Special case to this tenet are maybe in Turkey and Malaysia which moved
towards export of consumable merchandise and in Saudi Arabia which built extensive scale
petrochemical commercial ventures.
Real technology transfer
The term real technology transfer refers to a transplantation or anchorage of the imported
technology
There are a few necessities for true engineering exchange to occur. They are

The beneficiary nation or firm ought to exchange the full core technology.
The beneficiary ought to ace the imported core tech and after that move to create
capacities for
o Adaptation and expansion into similar related modern exercises.
o Independent product improvement.
o Independent system improvement.
The beneficiary ought to be always caution of changes in the economic situations i.e.
market conditions and react in like manner by presenting configuration changes,
quality change, and new items and methodology.
The beneficiary ought to have the capacity to make related advances by utilizing his
own particular R&D offices or by depending on the national R&D system.

There are a few systems utilized as a part of technology transfer. These are

(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)

(e)
(f)

(g)

(h)

Direct foreign investments where a foreign organization has control over


operations.
Joint ventures where a local and remote organization own and work the firm.
Licensing where the local firm enters into foreign firms for utilizing licenses,
patents and core technologies.
Management contracts which could incorporate production management, staff
administration, purchase of capital merchandise and materials, budgetary
administration and marketing.
Technical help contracts for continuous support.
International contracting where the beneficiary depends on counselling firms for
feasibility studies and designing configuration and after that capital supplies is
contracted to assembling and supply firms.
Unpacking the technology where the customer breaks down the whole project into
judicious segments and after that chooses how and from where every segment
ought to be gotten.
Turnkey contract where the whole operation from planning to pilot generation is
contracted to a single firm which may choose it subcontractors for parts of the
task.

It should be pointed out that technology transfer could also occur between Islamic countries
especially in areas where in some countries have already achieved excellence. For instance,
technology can be moved from Turkey in zones identified with leather, textile and glass
while in Malaysia exceeds expectations in electronics hardware and Jordan exceeds
expectations in drip watering system and utilization of plastics in agribusiness. Recently
industrialized nations, for example, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Brazil and Argentine are
likewise in position to transfer technologies in numerous modern fields.
Reference
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUES FOR DEVELOPMENT IN THE MUSLIM
WORLD. Fakhruddin A. Daghestani Arafat R. Altamemi

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