In recent years, firms have increasingly contributed to and been confronted with a patent landscape characterized by numerous but marginal inventions, overlapping claims and patent fences. Literature suggests that both the fragmentation of ownership and the threat of a firm's patent applications...

In the context of increasing globalization of markets, merger and acquisition activities in the 1990s are said to be driven by reorganization processes with respect to concentration on firms’ core competencies in order to increase or maintain market power in international markets. This paper...