Re-conceptualizing intellectual property regimes in international business research: Foreign-friendliness paradoxes facing MNCs in China

Abstract

This article seeks to better explain the complex challenges that intellectual property (IP) regimes pose to foreign multinational corporations (MNCs). It draws on in-depth research into the appropriability and entrepreneurial risks as well as transaction costs that China’s IP regime has posed to foreign MNCs to date, and forecasts how these risks and costs may evolve in the future. I find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, IP regimes are not always best conceptualized as either “weak” or “strong”. Instead, I illustrate that complex “foreign-friendliness paradoxes” are possible in IP regimes, show how they evolve, and explain them with a more robust framework than previously available. These findings help re-conceptualize IP regimes in IB research.