Universal intellectual property rights: Too much of a good thing?

Abstract

Developing countries' incentives to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) are studied in a model of vertical innovation. Enforcing IPR boosts export opportunities to advanced economies but slows down technological transfers and incentives to invest in R&D. Asymmetric protection of IPR, strict in the North and lax in the South, leads in many cases to a higher world level of innovation than universal enforcement. IPR enforcement is U-shaped in the relative size of the export market compared to the domestic one: rich countries and small/poor countries enforce IPR, the former to protect their innovations, the latter to access foreign markets, while large emerging countries free-ride on rich countries' technology to serve their internal demand.

Improving the Innovative Performance of Renewable Energy Enterprises in China: Effects of Subsidy Policy and Intellectual Property Legislation

“…Therefore, China's legislature should develop an IPP system that promotes technological innovation in its renewable energy industry in line with actual economic and technological development and the international environment [62,63]. While fulfilling the obligations of international conventions and safeguarding the reasonable intellectual property interests of Chinese multinational enterprises, excessive levels of intellectual property protection at the expense of social public welfare and to the detriment of national interests should be avoided [64]. Furthermore, it is important to further publicize the relevant IPP laws and basic protection paths, including in renewable energy enterprises, scientific research institutions, and higher education institutions, and to conduct IPP publicity and training for relevant staff, encouraging relevant enterprises to effectively protect their IPP through relevant laws and further improve the capacity of renewable energy IPP.…”

Use of the Industrial Property System in Colombia (2018): A Supervised Learning Application

“…There is also the study of [ 11 ]. These authors found that the enforcement of intellectual property rights is positively related to increased exports to advanced economies [ 12 ], but has negative effects in developing countries, associated with reduced speed of technology transfers and incentives to invest in R&D. [ 13 ] established that rich countries and small or poor countries apply intellectual property rights for different reasons.…”

The Consequences of Radical Patent-Regime Change

“…By contrast, Branstetter et al (2006) provide empirical evidence that multinational firms transfer more technology to their foreign subsidiaries when patent laws in the receiving countries were strengthened. In a recent study, Auriol et al (2019) argue that the incentives to protect intellectual property rights differ and depend on stage of the development and the size of an emerging country. This paper provides an empirical test of the net effect of patent protection on innovation by exploiting the exogenous adoption of Prussian patent law in states that Prussia annexed in 1866.…”