Intellectual Property Services and Corporate Innovation:An Empirical Study of Patent Agencies
Innovation is the primary driving force for economic development,and high-end service industries such as patent agencies play a crucial role in enhancing intellectual property(IP)protection and fostering innovation.The IP service industry spans the entire IP system chain,supporting high-quality creation,efficient utilization,stringent protec-tion,and advanced management of IP.It is also a key driver for China's industrial structure upgrading and innovation-driven development.However,academia has not extensively explored how IP services affect innovation and what factors determine this impact.This paper investigates the impact and mechanisms of patent agencies on corporate innovation,using China's A-share listed companies that applied for invention patents from 2007 to 2020 as the research sample.Both theoretical and empirical analyses indicate that utilizing patent agencies significantly enhances the quality of corporate innovation.Mecha-nism analysis reveals that patent agencies improve the quality of patent applications,reduce the probability of patent with-drawals or rejections,and facilitate exploratory innovation and patent portfolio strategies.Furthermore,larger agencies with higher market shares and broader technical expertise have more pronounced positive effects on corporate innovation.Finally,estimates obtained through instrumental variable regression and propensity score matching(PSM)support the above findings.Compared with existing literature,this paper makes three primary contributions.Firstly,it rigorously demonstrates the essential role of IP services in establishing market mechanisms that incentivize innovation.Using fixed-effects mod-els,instrumental variables,PSM,and other robustness tests,along with text analysis to quantify patent application qual-ity,this paper effectively identifies the causal effects of patent agencies on corporate innovation,offering insights into fur-ther leveraging the innovation incentives of the IP system.Secondly,from the perspective of patent agency services,this paper expands research on the impact of producer ser-vices on innovation development.Existing research exploring this relationship has focused on financial intermediaries such as banks and securities underwriters.Unlike financial intermediaries that indirectly promote innovation through efficient al-location of funds,patent agencies directly serve the creation,utilization,protection,and management of patents,thus deeply involved in the entire process of patent production-from pre-application exploration,patent application,examina-tion and authorization,to patent protection.This paper provides the most direct empirical evidence for the impact of knowledge-intensive producer services on corporate innovation,leading to recommendations for fostering specialized and branded IP service agencies.Lastly,the findings guide the development of public policies and the refinement of corporate strategies.On the one hand,the government should help optimize the IP service supply structure and support value-added services such as IP as-set evaluation,transformation,and financing,thus safeguarding and promoting high-quality innovation.On the other hand,companies should outsource knowledge,skill,and experience-intensive tasks such as patent applications and pat-ent navigation to patent agencies,to fully leverage IP services to help enhance innovation quality and transform IP advan-tages into market competitive advantages.Several insights can be derived from the above findings.Firstly,companies should actively utilize IP services to pro-mote the high-quality creation,efficient utilization,and stringent protection of IP,which are indispensable for achieving sustainable innovation.Secondly,IP service agencies should focus on the urgent needs of innovation entities to optimize their service content and innovate their business models.In particular,crucial channels for patent agencies to help enhance the quantity and quality of corporate innovation include supporting exploratory innovation and developing patent portfolio strategies.Beyond basic agency services,IP service providers should expand their business scope,extend service chains,and improve service efficiency to continuously strengthen the role of IP in incentivizing innovation.Lastly,the govern-ment should continue to reform the IP service industry to promote high-quality development.While larger agencies with higher market shares and broader technical expertise can better foster innovation,China's IP service industry currently consists of a small number of well-known IP service providers,overwhelmed by a large number of low-quality service providers.The government can address the above problem by establishing well-regulated and dynamic market mecha-nisms,promoting expansion and internationalization of IP service agencies,and facilitating high-quality collaborative de-velopment in certain niche service areas.
万方数据
