The competition networks of firms in the Standards-Development Organizations

In the past, most of the researches depict firms’ competitive strategy in the standards-development organizations (SDOs) from the perspectives of patent strategy, patent portfolio, and strategic alliance of the firm. However, only few researches have been conducted to explore how firms compete with each other in the SDOs to control the development of product technologies. This study considers that the act of firms declaring standard essential patents (SEPs) on the technical specifications advocates their technical implementation rights. When different firms declare their SEPs on the same technical specifications, they will create an inter-firm competition network because they advocate their respective technical implementation rights. This study uses social network analysis to clarify firms’ declaration of SEPs on the technical specification in the SDOs of the telecommunications industry from 1990 to 2016. It is generally believed that the number of SEPs owned by firms is the main reason that directly affects the competitive relationships between firms. This study further proves that the relative degree of firm's technical implementation rights in the “core” technical specifications will be the moderation effects to enhance the degree of competition between the focal firm and other firms.