This study investigates the technology licensing decision of an incumbent patentor with quality-improving technology in duopoly model with heterogenous consumers, and quality information disclosure strategies of the patentor and the licensee that compete in quantity. A patentor is faced with a dilemma whether to disclose product quality information to consumers when technology licensing occurs and whether to encourage the licensee to disclose its quality information. While few scholars study the quality information disclosure in the background of technology licensing, these problems are of importance for the technology licensing because the disclosure decision can significantly influence the consumer belief about product quality and generate different effects on patentor's profitability. We find that the patentor can benefit from choosing information disclosure strategies. Under per-unit royalty licensing, we show that the patentor may choose not to disclose its quality information but encourage the licensee to disclose quality information. However, we find, under fixed fee licensing, when the disclosure cost is sufficiently low and quality difference is not large, only a large prior probability of the product being of high-quality can motivate the choice that the patentor disclose information and require the licensee to disclose. Interestingly, our results also suggest that per-unit royalty licensing leads to more information disclosure and higher profits than fixed-fee licensing. Our work identifies the optimal conditions under which the patentor can deal with the dilemma in quality information disclosure, proposes decision support tools in evaluating the values of quality information disclosure, and provides new management insights in quality disclosure strategy under technology licensing.

本研究调查了具有异质消费者的双寡头模型中具有质量改进技术的现任专利权人的技术许可决策，以及在数量上竞争的专利权人和被许可人的质量信息披露策略。在技​​术许可发生时是否向消费者披露产品质量信息以及是否鼓励被许可人披露其质量信息，专利权人面临一个难题。尽管很少有学者在技术许可的背景下研究质量信息公开，但是这些问题对于技术许可而言非常重要，因为公开决策会显着影响消费者对产品质量的信念，并对专利权人的获利能力产生不同的影响。我们发现专利权人可以从选择信息公开策略中受益。根据单位使用费许可，我们表明专利权人可以选择不公开其质量信息，而是鼓励被许可人公开质量信息。但是，我们发现，在固定费用许可下，当披露成本足够低且质量差异不大时，只有产品具有高品质的先验概率才有可能激发专利权人披露信息并要求被许可人选择。公开。有趣的是，我们的结果还表明，与固定费用许可相比，按单位许可使用费许可导致更多的信息披露和更高的利润。我们的工作确定了专利权人可以解决质量信息公开难题的最佳条件，