Co-ownership of intellectual property as a symptom of cooperation in the Polish metal industry

The open innovation paradigm suggests that companies should open up and cooperate with external partners. One of the manifestations of such action in the field of cooperation between science and business is coownership of patents. It is the result of the intellectual potential of research units linked to real needs definable by the industry. The positive results of research and development works and "monopoly" obtained through patent rights, definitively constitute a major factor in the competitiveness of enterprises. Also in the steel industry. The presence of the cross-organizational cooperation becomes a necessity to generate knowledge of a certain quality. The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence of cooperation networks for the steel industry in Poland in the field of patent rights. The network links were selected on the basis of a database for patent applications from the years 1995-2014. In order to construct a graphical structure of relationship has been applied Social Network Analysis (SNA). The second goal of the study was to evaluate the usefulness of the proposed research procedure for the purpose of identification of network participants, particularly the key players. In addition, monitoring of cooperation networks can be a useful tool in assessing intellectual property management policy in projects financed from public funds.