Abstract:

In the past ten years， our country has attached great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights and has issued a series of policies and measures to improve the level of intellectual property protection. Intellectual property rights protection is the cornerstone of the socialistic market economic. To strengthen the protection and application capacity of intellectual property as well as improve the creative awareness of science and technology are significant develop our national economy， and encourage scientific research. Patent licensing and authorization contracts are key to turning intellectual property into actual productivity. However， unreasonable licensing contracts can easily lead to the breakdown of technology licensing cooperation， which can lead to patent infringement disputes. In this context， the following prololems will be studied： how should a technology provider choose a reasonable technology licensing agreement？ What impact will the corporate social responsibility preference have on technology licensing cooperation？ And what is the impact of corporate social responsibility on product distribution and consumer welfare and other issues？Considering a supply chain consisting of a technology provider， a branded manufacturer and a retailer， the technology license contracts designed by technology provider and the pricing strategies between the branded manufacturer and the retailer in the presence of corporate social responsibility preference and asymmetric information are investigated. The main work in this paper includes four parts. At first， the optimal licensing contract is proposed and the optimal pricing strategies under asymmetric information are analyzed. Second， on this basis， the effects of corporate social responsibility preference on the equilibrium are analyzed， and consequently the optimal pricing and contract design of supply chain members are compared under different types of market demand. Third， to address the value of corporate social responsibility， the changing of profit of supply chain members， consumer surplus and social welfare in different situations is compared. Finally， the optimal decisions of supply chain's enterprises， and the changing of consumer surplus and social welfare under symmetric information and asymmetric information are compared.The results show that， the model designs a patent license agreement which meets participation constraint and incentive compatibility constraint to screen the market demand information from the patent owner point of view. By solving the optimization problem， the optimal pricing， order quantity and licensing contract design for supply chain members are presented under asymmetric information， respectively. Further， it is found that the corporate social responsibility will not affect the technology provider’s choice of technology licensing contract. It will always choose a technology licensing contract in the form of a fixed fee or a technology licensing contract in the form of a “royalty commission + fixed licensing fee”. Moreover， the corporate social responsibility will lead to a reduction in product wholesale price and retail price and an increase in product demand， which is conducive to improving the profit level and consumer welfare of retailers and supply chain systems. Finally， the existence of asymmetric information will affect the equilibrium decision-making of the supply chain， leading to the loss of profits of technology providers， but brand manufacturers can obtain additional information rent.

Key words: corporate social responsibility, technology licensing, product distribution, pricing