Patenting Decisions by South African Biotechnology Entrepreneurs

I present and analyze the results of a surveybroadly along the lines of the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey (a survey of patenting among U.S. high-tech entrepreneurs)conducted among South African biotechnology entrepreneurs. All 41 companies that qualified as part of the target population participated in the online survey. The results show that almost 60% (24) of South African entrepreneurial biotechnology companies sought patent protection for their innovations; 79% (19/24) of South African entrepreneurial biotechnology companies that have sought patent protection did so internationally, with the greater portions of these companies patenting in five to ten, or more than ten, major countries in the world. The responses by the South African entrepreneurial biotechnology companies support the main findings made by Graham et al. (that analyzed the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey) regarding U.S. high-tech entrepreneurs: in brief, that patenting is one of multiple elements that can be part of a biotechnology entrepreneur's appropriation strategy, and that the decision whether to utilize patenting as part of an appropriation strategy is informed by various combinations of reasons that are not limited by the traditional legal rationales for patenting, but also include purely strategic rationales. There are, within the broad parameters of these main findings, also significant differences between South African biotechnology entrepreneurs and their U.S. counterparts, such as the relative importance of patenting as an element of a company's appropriation strategy, and the frequency of cost considerations as reason for forgoing patenting.