International Patent Protection Research Articles

Is worldwide patent protection converging? A cross-country index of patent protection strength 1990–2020

This paper introduces the International Patent Protection Strength (IPPS) index, a composite measure designed to assess global patent protection from the perspective of patent owners. Spanning 134 countries from 1990 to 2020, the IPPS index encompasses four dimensions—international mechanism, legislation, enforcement, and administration—constructed using standardized techniques recommended by the OECD. Results indicate global growth in patent protection strength until 2005, followed by a plateau with persistent disparities. Our findings also highlight the heterogeneity across countries and dimensions. In particular, variations in four dimensions are observed among countries at different income levels, with enforcement and administration being more pronounced, often due to resource constraints and a lack of willingness. Linear regression analysis demonstrates a positive and statistically significant relationship between the IPPS index and the Global Innovation Index (GII), affirming the correlation between patent protection strength and innovation. Sensitivity tests validate the robustness of country rankings across different weighting and aggregation methods. These results align with the viewpoint of some commentators who argue that a peaceful North-South dialogue requires introducing a development agenda that allows for affordable access, rather than solely extending intellectual property rights. The IPPS index serves as a valuable tool for policymakers, patent managers, and practitioners, enabling the identification of strengths and weaknesses in patent protection systems and informing targeted policy measures and strategic decision-making.

Medical Device Advancement and Monetization Necessitate Intellectual Property Management and Spin-offs

There is fierce competition in the market for medical devices, and any innovations that have been made should protect the duration of patents. As a result, researchers must adhere to intellectual property rights from the time of invention to its completion and compete with others until the medical device is set to be released into the market. Medical devices include a vast range of goods such as; surgical implants, diagnostic kits, drug delivery systems, and so on. There is a massive opportunity to establish medical devices by leveraging new technologies that can be protected and monopolized through various intellectual property rights. After securing intellectual property rights, a medical device is developed as and when researchers find it at different phases of development. The 3I process (identity, invent, and implement) has been referred to in the article to guide medical device innovators on varied IP aspects linked with each phase. The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) assists applicants in obtaining international patent protection for inventions, assists patent offices in making patent-granting decisions, and facilitates public access to a wealth of technical information about those inventions.

A Patent Bibliometric Analysis of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) Technology

Large amounts of CO2 from human socioeconomic activities threaten environmental sustainability. Moreover, uncontrolled resource use and lack of relevant technology exacerbate this issue. For this reason, carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology has gained worldwide attention. Many scholars have researched CCUS, but few have used CCUS patent bibliometric analysis from a unified perspective. This article aims to provide a conclusive analysis for CCUS researchers and policymakers, as well as summarize the innovation trends, technological distribution, and topic evolution. Based on 11,915 pieces of patent data from the Derwent Innovations Index, we used bibliometric analysis and data mining methods to conduct research on four dimensions: overall trend, geographical distribution, patentees, and patent content. The results of this article are as follows. CCUS has entered a rapid development stage since 2013. Patents are mainly distributed geographically in China, the US, and Japan, especially in heavy industries such as energy and electricity. Large enterprises hold patents with a relatively stable network of cooperators and attach great importance to international patent protection. A total of 12 topics were identified through clustering, and these topics gradually shifted from technicalities to commercialization, and from industrial production to all aspects of people’s daily lives.

Innovation, Imitation, and Political Cleavages in International Trade and Patent Protection

Innovation, Imitation, and Political Cleavages in International Trade and Patent Protection

International patent protection and trade: Transaction-level evidence

We report a hitherto undocumented causal mechanism of how patent protection affects exports. The empirical analysis leverages unique data on the worldwide patenting and exporting activities at the product level for the universe of French firms. Exploiting heterogeneity of patent coverage within firm–product–country destinations, we find evidence of a patent premium. Goods protected by patents in a destination country are associated with higher export quantities, ceteris paribus. The effect ranges between four and eleven percent. The causality of the finding is confirmed using rejected patent applications, which are exogenous to the firm. Exports collapse when firms lose patent protection.

Public health and international patent protection

After the coming into force of TRIPS Agreement much importance has been given to the concept of public health. Doha Declaration on Public Health provides a legal basis for interpreting the TRIPS Agreement as consistent with public health objectives and for using the flexibility of the agreement for this purpose. However, these efforts could not resolve the apparent conflict between public health and patent protection. The right to health is a basic human right of every person and includes the right to access the essential drugs. However, right to public health cannot be ensured when there is no certainty as to the legal status of the Doha Declaration. Issues, such as, how much weightage will be given to the Declaration when the WTO Panel or the Appellate Body is adjudging a dispute which affects public health, are bound to arise.

Post-grant patent review in China: an empirical analysis

With a series of policies to stimulate innovation and patent activities, China has become a world leader in both patent applications and patent litigation. These major developments, together with the escalated US-China trade tensions, have made China an integral but controversial venue for international patent protection. The Chinese patent system, especially its detailed practice and cases, is in need of a comprehensive empirical study. This article analyzed 8766 Chinese patent invalidity cases decided between 2014 and 2016, which, together with my prior work on patent infringement lawsuits, offers a comprehensive picture on how the bifurcated patent system in China works. First, it found that only a small number, about 2.0 percent, of Chinese patents are ever subject to infringement or invalidity disputes, shedding light on the patent office's rational ignorance of a patent's validity at first place. Second, it found that the invalidity rate for invention patents in China (54.6%) was lower than in many other countries, such as the US (83.9%) and Germany (73%), indicating that the Chinese patent system is more pro-patentee than once believed. Third, it raised the question of Chinese patents’ quality based on various characteristics of these cases, including patent types and petitioners’ entity status.

Internationalization, the Highly Qualified and the Innovation Output

The process of Internationalization strongly influences the developed economies, including the EU, whereas the large scale of international trade in goods is characterized by production with high value added. Based on this, the fabrication of such commodities requires a highly qualified workforce and is very often followed by international patent protection. This paper focuses on the link between the fraction of highly educated with tertiary education and the innovation output, measured by the number of EPO patent applications per million inhabitants. Due to the rising mobility of a highly qualified workforce, we have also tested the correlation between the fraction of tertiary educated foreigners and the innovation output. The aim of the paper is to state whether the higher share of a highly qualified workforce and the fraction of highly qualified foreigners correlate with innovation activities within the EU Member States. Given the number of EU Member States, the EU macro-regions division based on the social models of Esping-Andersen (1990), Sapir (2005), as well as Dolwik and Martin (2014) will be applied.

Patenting choices for valuable subsidiary inventions created in an uncertain and fast changing environment

Purpose Firms increasingly diversify their technological competencies to achieve different strategic objectives. This study aims to explore the impacts of technological knowledge characteristics on patenting choices for inventions created by subsidiaries in an uncertain and fast changing environment. Design/methodology/approach The data used in this study are patents granted to the world largest firms by the USPTO for inventions attributable to their subsidiaries in China between 1996 and 2005. In addition, the patent data from State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China are used for the matching in terms of filing patent applications in both USA and China for a same piece of technology. A discrete Logit model is used to examine the effects of technological distance and categories on Chinese patent application and international priority. Findings The findings suggest that firms have priority to seek international patent protection, instead of host country protection, for valuable subsidiary inventions in their background and marginal technological fields. In addition, a firm may seek host country legal protection simultaneously for inventions built upon knowledge from technologically distant fields. Research limitations/implications As we are more interested in protecting technological knowledge, the protection of other types of knowledge, such as organizational knowledge, deserves further research attentions. Moreover, future research may expand current study by including small and medium firms, as well as firms in other developing economies. Practical implications While the economic and legal environment in China may have evolved since studied period, the results have practical implications for firms in other developing countries that are at an early stage of catching-up or those in a host location featuring a similar uncertain and fast changing environment. In particular, the study suggests that foreign firm managers would have more strategic choices of patenting than local firms in the host country. For strategically important inventions bridging complex knowledge from different technological areas, firms could seek protection in multiple countries simultaneously, including both home country and other major markets. Furthermore, managers could choose whether or not to protect a particular category of technologies in host country depending on value of the technology to the firm and the IPR protection of host country. Finally, the approach of looking at knowledge-level characteristics, which can be easily measured through readily available intra-firm information, provides managers with a practical and useful tool to make these strategic decisions. Originality/value This study represents an effort to extend the understanding on how foreign MNCs could generate and appropriate valuable technologies in an uncertain and fast-changing environment. In particular, the authors focus on how MNCs could use different international patenting patterns to benefit from subsidiary inventions. Whereas previous literature mainly focuses on country-level and firm-level determinants, this study approaches the topic through the lens of knowledge-level factors. By studying how knowledge characteristics determine firm strategic behaviors, the authors offer additional justifications of the knowledge-based view of the firm. Meanwhile, the findings enrich our understanding of an important component of MNC’s global strategies in managing their technologies through selectively patenting in different locations. Firms pursue diversified technologies for different strategic objectives. As subsidiary inventions become a very important source of firm competitiveness, MNCs have to face the trade-off between higher patenting costs and the appropriability of subsidiary generated knowledge. The findings suggest that it is not necessary for MNCs to protect all subsidiary inventions in host countries.

The impact of patent protection and financial development on industrial R&D

Stronger protection of patent rights is thought to spur innovation through securing returns to R&D investments. Those investments must be financed, however, suggesting that the responsiveness of R&D to patent reforms varies with financial development levels. We examine the joint impact of domestic and international financial-market development and patent protection on R&D intensities in 22 manufacturing industries in 20 OECD countries for the period 1990-2009. We show that stronger patent rights increase R&D intensities in patent-intensive industries, accounting for the need for external financing and the amount of tangible assets. The primary impact varies across types of financial development: patent protection raises R&D in high-patent industries where countries have more limited equity and credit markets. In contrast, in countries with more developed bond markets industry R&D is more sensitive to patent rights. Interestingly, patent rights in countries that are more exposed to foreign direct investment increase R&D intensities at all levels of financial development.

How Patent Rights Affect Vietnam’s Importation

Stronger patent rights will help innovators to protect their inventions in domestic and export markets, however stronger patent right exporting decisions depend on market expansion and market power effects. Although it is quite late to promulgate patent law, Vietnam began to record patent applications and granted them for both domestic and foreign firms from 1981 (patent law was enacted in 2005). However the number of foreign patent applications is different among Vietnam trade partners. I use a number of patent applications of Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France to analyze the relationship between trade inflow from those countries and patent rights, I find that Japan applied for the greatest number of patents, which have increased over time. Japanese exports to Vietnam are dominated by market power effects, while other countries’ patent application numbers tend to fluctuate or increases insignificantly over time, with exports being dominated by market expansion effects.
 Keywords
 Patent right, market power effects, market expansion effects, Vietnamese importation
 References
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R&D Investments, EPO Patent Applications and the Economic Heterogeneity within the EU

Abstract In addition to internationalization and growing volumes of international trade in goods, the importance of expenditure on research and development (R&D) has grown significantly. National patent protection has become rather insufficient with increased international trade in goods, which has resulted in the importance of the international patent protection. The main aim of the article is to analyse the relation between R&D investment and the number of patent applications filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) after the year 2000, when the EU‘s Lisbon Strategy was launched. The authors have focused primarily on the differences among the EU macro-regions, which are based on the socioeconomic models. Conclusions imply that one percentage point of R&D expenditure generates roughly 100 EPO applications and the findings also show that individual macro-regions have the identical scattered data. However, dispersions in the individual groups of the EU Member States after the year 2000 differ. The EU Member States are starting to vary significantly in the intensity of R&D support also within each macro-region, thus disparities increase within the EU. Therefore, the attitude to GERD is considered to be an important factor contributing to the greater economic disparities within the EU.

The Impact of Patent Protection and Financial Development on Industrial R&D

Stronger protection of patent rights is thought to spur innovation through securing returns to R&D investments. Those investments must be financed, however, suggesting that the responsiveness of R&D to patent reforms varies with financial development levels. We examine the joint impact of domestic and international financial-market development and patent protection on R&D intensities in 22 manufacturing industries in 20 OECD countries for the period 1990-2009. We show that stronger patent rights increase R&D intensities in patent-intensive industries, accounting for the need for external financing and the amount of tangible assets. The primary impact varies across types of financial development: patent protection raises R&D in high-patent industries where countries have more limited equity and credit markets. In contrast, in countries with more developed bond markets industry R&D is more sensitive to patent rights. Interestingly, patent rights in countries that are more exposed to foreign direct investment increase R&D intensities at all levels of financial development.

Many Things You Know about Patent Infringement Litigation in China Are Wrong

As the Chinese government continues to stimulate domestic innovation and patent activities via a variety of policies, China has become a world leader in both patent applications and litigation. These major developments have made China an integral venue of international patent protection for inventors and entrepreneurs worldwide. However, due to the lack of judicial transparency before 2014, westerners had virtually no access to Chinese patent litigation data and knew little about how Chinese courts adjudicated patent cases. Instead, outside observers were left with a variety of impressions and guesses based on the text of Chinese law and the limited number of cases released by the press. Taking advantage of ongoing judicial reform in China, including mandated public access to all judgments made since January 1, 2014 via a database called China Judgements Online (CJO), this paper analyzes 1,663 patent infringement judgments – all publicly available final patent infringement cases decided by local people’s courts in 2014. Surprisingly, many findings in this paper contradict long-standing beliefs held by westerners about patent enforcement in China. One prominent example is that foreign patent holders were as likely to litigate as domestic patent holders, and received noticeably better results – higher win rate, injunction rate, and average damages. Another example is that all plaintiffs won in 80.16% of all patent infringement cases and got permanent injunctions automatically in 90.25% of cases whose courts found patent infringement, indicating stronger patent protection in China than one might expect.

Rising Economies in the International Patent Regime: From Rule-breakers to Rule-changers and Rule-makers

ABSTRACTRising economies face a crucial dilemma when establishing their position on international patent law. Should they translate their increasing economic strength into political power to further developing countries’ interests in lower levels of international patent protection? Or, anticipating a rising domestic interest in stronger international patent protection, should they adopt a position that favours maximal patent protection? Drawing on multiple case studies using a most-similar system design, we argue that rising economies, after having been coerced into adopting more stringent patent standards, tend to display ambivalent positions, trapped in bureaucratic politics and caught between conflicting domestic constituencies. We find that the recent proliferation of international institutions and the expansion of transnational networks have contributed to fragmentation and polarisation in domestic patent politics. As a result, today’s emerging economies experience a more tortuous transformative process than did yesterday’s. This finding is of particular relevance for scholars studying rising powers, as well as for those working on policy diffusion, regulatory regimes, transnational networks and regime complexes.

Biotechnology Patenting in Small Countries—Strategies for the International Marketplace

Abstract The article investigates the conventional strategy for obtaining international patent protection by starting with the national patent application, then converting it to the international P...

Technology production: A challenge for economic growth and development in Africa

Africa has recently become the world second fastest growing region, but still, poverty has not improved accordingly. The paper makes the case that in order to further boost economic growth and promote development, African economies need to go beyond imitation and technology transfer and start producing technology. Some of the arguments are: innovation generates stronger growth gains than imitation and copying; stronger international patent protection contributes to hinder the imitation process; technology tends to be purpose-driven and can be inappropriate. Drawing on the determinants of two features of world research and development distribution, that is, concentration over half of the world countries and underinvestment, the paper goes on to suggest ways in which Africa may go about spending significantly on R&D and discuss the corresponding challenges they will face. Key words: Technology, innovation, imitation, Sub-Saharan Africa, growth, development.

Is there a case for non-discrimination in the international protection of intellectual property?

We evaluate the case for non-discrimination in international patent protection. When trade is not subject to any frictions/barriers, requiring national treatment (NT) does not affect the rate of innovation (and welfare) since unfavorable discrimination suffered abroad by innovators in the absence of NT is fully offset by favorable discrimination enjoyed by them at home. When trade barriers exist, however, such international offsetting in patent protection is incomplete and innovation incentives are actually lower under NT. By lumping domestic and foreign patent protection together, NT blunts the overall effectiveness of patent protection in incentivizing innovation in the presence of trade barriers.

Инновационные подходы к облегчению условий развития инновационных малых предприятий в промышленности

One of the problems of the Russian economy is the low level of labor productivity, which re-quires the development of the economy in in-tensive manner. To this end, changes in the tax and credit policy are developed in order to support the venture financing of innovation in the industrial sector. To meet the challenges there are offers: differentiation of the tax bene-fits in the form factor taking into account the cost of R & D, depending on the degree of in-novation and breadth of international patent protection and targeted reduction of the refi-nancing for commercial ones.

Do complex inventions need less international patent protection?

I show that very complex inventions stay outside the patent system more often than medium-complexity products. I test this hypothesis using a subset of international patents data. The regressions confirm that patents and technological complexity have an inverted-U shape relation.