The market for technological intangibles: a conceptual framework for commercial transactions

In the last few years, the relevance of the intangible assets of companies has clearly intensified and the corresponding market, in which intangibles are exchanged, has grown more and more. Several authors have deeply analysed each single commercial agreement involving intangible assets (such as licensing, franchising, etc.), but a complete vision of the phenomena is lacking, especially with reference to technology and technical know-how, which have their own peculiar features. The aim of the paper is to make a step further in this direction, focusing, among the wide variety of intangibles, mainly on the technological ones (i.e., technology, productive know-how, patents, software, industrial methods), in contrast to commercial intangibles. In detail, the paper presents a deep literature analysis to highlight the different typologies of business transactions through which technology can be bought and sold, operating a selection in the variety of contracts and agreements used for intangibles and it discusses the operative and managerial critical issues in the application of that kind of transactions. Furthermore, a case study is presented in order to deepen the managerial implications of different alternative business transactions considered in order to exchange a technical know-how.