Real Options and Intellectual Property: Capital Budgeting Under Imperfect Patent Protection (Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems)

Over the last years, due to intensive competition in the knowledge economy, legal aspects surrounding intellectual property (IP) rights - including litigation and settlement - have continuously gained in importance. Correspondingly, professional IP management has become an indispensable element of successful value-based management (VBM) in research-intensive firms. With this text, the author proposes an integrated approach to patent risk and capital budgeting in pharmaceutical research and development (R and D), developing an option-based view (OBV) of imperfect patent protection, which draws upon contingent-claims analysis, stochastic game theory, as well as novel numerical methods. Bridging a widening gap between recent advances in the theory of financial analysis and current challenges faced by pharmaceutical companies, the text re-initiates a discussion about the contribution of quantitative frameworks to value-based R and D management.