Abstract

The national laboratory undertakes the critical mission of achieving original innovation breakthroughs, tackling key industrial technologies, and promoting technology transfer. Yet their current intellectual property (IP) management is plagued by prominent problems including fragmented institutional structure, low-quality patent output, inefficient achievement transformation, and misaligned benefit distribution mechanisms, which have severely hindered the fulfillment of their strategic missions. Drawing on the institutional logics theory, this paper analyzes the core requirements of missions for the IP management of national laboratories, constructs an analytical framework for mission-driven national laboratory IP management, and clarifies the intrinsic coupling relationship between mission-driven IP management, institutional logics, national innovation systems, and mission-oriented innovation policies. By drawing on the experiences and insights from the IP management systems of national laboratories in developed countries, this paper identifies the key shortcomings of China’s national laboratories in organizational structure, talent allocation, achievement transformation, and standard and patent layout. It further proposes targeted construction paths, including the establishment of integrated specialized institutions, the building of professional talent teams, the implementation of the “shared patent right + pay-after-use” mechanism, the optimization of benefit distribution rules, and the cultivation of Standard Essential Patents. This study theoretically enriches the research on IP governance of public research organizations, and practically provides operational policy references for national laboratories to fulfill their strategic missions and enhance industrial self-reliance and controllability.