Dieter F. Reinhardt
Former Head of Corporate Licensing Center, Siemens AG, Munchen, Germany

Alexander J. Wurzer
Managing Director, PATEV GmbH & Co. KG, Munich, and Visiting Professor, CEIPI, Centre of Intellectual Property Studies in Europe, Robert Schuman University, Strasbourg, and Director, Steinbeis-Transfer-Institution for Intellectual Property Management, Steinbeis Univeristy, Berlin

Patents have taken over additionally to their original function of protecting their own innovative achievements in the industrial area against copying more and more the function of an instrument for the strategic management of business enterprises. In particular the patents are increasingly also used as sources of income through licensing or patent sales as bargaining chips in cross license agreements as know how currency in the acquisition of enterprises or as basis of financial transactions. Up to the 1980s the numbers of annually filed patent applications was proportional to the R&D expenses but as a consequence of the shift in the importance of patents since then the patent filings have grown more than proportionally.