How to Enhance Intellectual Property Business Organizations’ Capabilities? A Business Process Maturity Perspective

The organizational performance of intellectual property management departments is often subjective and not easy to evaluate in a traditional way. The software development department is similar to the intellectual property management department, as both are highly autonomous, rely heavily on professional manpower, and provide professional services. It is also difficult to use traditional factors to evaluate their competitiveness and success. Generally, the capabilities of the software development department can be evaluated by the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). The higher the maturity is of the organizational capability of the department or company, the better is the work performance. This research refers to the concept of CMM to evaluate the capability maturity of an intellectual property management organization and the key success factors of the Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) to analyze and discuss such an organization. In this research, we use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as an analysis tool. We analyze and compare In-house IP group and Law Firm IP group; their performance is mostly considered to be related to personal profession and is often regarded as difficult to evaluate. The capabilities that determine the overall maturity of an organization are usually not easily distinguished. Therefore, it is difficult to use a unified standard to measure the completion time and cost of a case. This is what the two different intellectual property management organizations have in common.