• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.761-790
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• 2011

In the knowledge-based economy, firms are increasingly exploiting their intellectual properties, especially patents. However, firms usually fail to commercialize all of their patents and some of them are not used even for strategic purposes. Therefore managing sleeping patents constitutes one important aspect of firms' overall patent strategies. This paper considers market uncertainty, technology uncertainty and strategic uncertainty as the reasons for sleeping patents. We analyze how firms' patent-related activities can reduce sleeping patent ratios. The firms' activities examined in here are patent audit, preliminary evaluation, prior art and cooperation. Noticing the prevalence of sleeping patents, this paper contributes by providing insights into how firm's activities affect the sleeping patent ratios. Insights for practitioners and policy makers have been provided from the empirical results.