涉外诉讼影响企业专利申请的规模异质性研究

A heterogeneous analysis of the impact of foreign-related patent litigation on the scale of patent application of defendant enterprises

加强专利司法保护就是激励创新,专利诉讼能否促进企业技术创新是专利经济管理研究的重要议题。本文以2000—2018年我国涉外发明专利民事案件为样本,构建动态效应模型,重点考察涉诉后不同规模被告企业的技术创新决策差异。研究发现:(1)涉外专利诉讼会提升我国被告企业的专利申请质量,而且大中型企业专利申请质量的改进效果更明显;(2)与专利申请质量变化不同,涉外专利诉讼发起后,小微企业专利申请数量显著增加,而大中型企业专利申请基本不受影响;(3)考虑创新能力异质性,小微企业涉诉后专利申请数量呈现倒U型增长关系。创新基础薄弱的小微企业涉诉后专利申请更活跃,但受限于经济效率影响,从诉讼后第五年开始,企业专利申请质量不再正向增长。

Strengthening patent judicial protection is to encourage innovation,and it is an important topic to discuss whether patent litigation can promote technological innovation of enterprise in the field of patent management research.The existing literatures mainly examine the effect of patent litigation on enterprises′R&D investment and number of patent applications,ignoring the changing trend of patent quality after patent litigation.This paper takes the foreign-related invention patent civil cases from 2000 to 2018 as a sample,and constructs a dynamic effect model to examine the differences in technological innovation decisions of defendants after the lawsuit was involved from the perspective of scale.Moreover;we use multiple indicators such as the number of claims,the width of patent protection,and the width of patent knowledge to describe the trend of changes in the quality of patent applications after patent litigation to ensure the reliability of the model.In terms of the amount of infringement compensation,the amounts of compensation for foreign-related patent litigation cases are higher than that of domestic patent litigation cases.The average value of the actual compensation for foreign-related patent cases that published from 2000 to 2018 reached 420,000 Yuan.From the perspective of litigation strategy,foreign-related patent litigations present the characteristics of combined litigations and multiple litigations.More than a quarter of foreign-related invention patent cases are patent combined litigations,half of which are multiple litigations.From the perspective of the parties involved in the lawsuit,80%of the enterprises that have applied for invention and utility model patents are small and micro enterprises.These characteristics of foreign-related patent litigations make the technological innovation decisions-making by Chinese defendant enterprises present the characteristics of heterogeneity of scale and heterogeneity of innovation ability after the lawsuit is involved.The empirical results show that:(1)Foreign-related patent litigation will improve the quality of patent applications of Chinese defendants,and which has a more significant positive effect on the quality of patent applications of large and medium-sized enterprises;(2)Different from the changes in the quality of patent applications,the number of patent applications by small and micro enterprises has increased significantly after the acceptance of foreign-related patent litigation,while the impact of foreign-related patent litigation on patent applications of large and medium-sized enterprises is not significant;(3)Considering the heterogeneity of innovation capabilities,the number of patents applications by small and micro enterprises after patent litigation shows an inverted U-shaped growth relationship.Small and micro enterprises with a weak innovation foundation are more active in patent applications after patent litigation,owing to the impact of economic efficiency;they would choose to give up improving the quality of patent applications from the fifth year after the lawsuit is closed.After controlling for endogenous influence and selection bias,the empirical estimation results are still robust.According to the research conclusion and the actual situation,we put forward two policy suggestions on how to improve enterprises innovation capabilities and patent quality:(1)Introducing patent quality-oriented policies,building a number of high-quality patent cultivation centers and further improving intellectual property financial service innovation to support small and micro enterprises;(2)Continuing to promote the construction of intellectual property courts and local intellectual property courts,improving the standards and calculation methods of intellectual property infringement compensation,and further stimulating the enthusiasm of enterprises for technological innovation.