THE SELF-REPORTED PATENT QUALITY OF CHINESE FIRMS: MOTIVATION SOURCE AND TECHNOLOGY ACCUMULATION EFFECTS ANALYSIS

Abstract

Enhanced innovation capacity has become imperative to China’s growth and development. Patent quantity and quality indicators are benchmark measures of innovative capacity. This paper utilizes data from the 2013 Chinese Patent Survey to explore self-evaluated firm-level patent quality in China. Focus is placed on the effects of technological accumulation and also patent motivation on four multi-dimensional self-evaluation indices: technical quality, writing quality, right stability and market value. The results: (i) verify the proposal that in high patent intensity industries “strategic patent behavior will reduce patent quality”; (ii) suggest that reducing administrative-driven patent behaviors could improve patent quality and (iii) find patent structure but not quantity to be positively correlated with patent quality. This serves to enrich understanding of China’s patent system and the one-dimensional “inventive step” analysis deriving from analyses of European Patent Survey data.