Managing intellectual property in the financial services industry sector: Learning from Swiss Re

Legal protection strategies are still a relatively new phenomenon in emerging business fields like the service industry sector. Especially patents are considered novel as intellectual property means for protecting service innovations, which particularly accounts for the Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) sector. This contribution focuses on the opportunities and risks of managing intellectual property in the financial services industry sector by empirically analysing the leading reinsurance company Swiss Re. Swiss Re is considered to be one of the first (re-) insurance organizations worldwide that created its own patent department and today carries out a consistent legal protection strategy. The in-depth single-case study design is based on a triple iterative research process. The paper concludes with a success factor model for managing intellectual property to protect service innovations in the financial services industry sector. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.