IPO与专利管理:基于中国企业的实证研究

IPO and Patent Management:An Empirical Study based on Chinese Firms

本文考察了企业在上市过程中是否会从事类似盈余管理的专利管理行为。研究发现:企业的专利申请量在IPO前后呈先升后降的倒V型状态,而这一规律主要是由质量较低的非发明专利的数量变化所主导。换言之,企业可能策略性地利用专利,特别是低质量的非发明专利进行了先拉升后回调的专利管理活动。进一步的研究表明,其目的是为了争取上市资格和提高IPO定价从而融入更多资金。此外,本文的实证结果显示,企业IPO前申请的专利的提前到期情况也更为严重,同时这种专利管理活动导致了资源错配,降低了上市企业的生产效率。

Although China has become the country with the largest number of patent applications since 2012,important challenges remain beneath the surface of an innovation boom.As the innovation-driven-growth model has become a national strategic priority,the key is to improve innovation quality and to mitigate distortions in firm innovation due to various institutional arrangements,including those in the financial sector.The stock market is an indispensable component of the financial system,through which capital is channeled to firms with profitable investment opportunities,such as those with innovation projects.The initial public offering(IPO)is the most important mechanism in selecting firms with good growth potential to receive financial capital.Thus,we should explore whether the IPO process has been efficient in funding the most efficient and innovative firms and how to best improve the efficiency in IPOs.Using data of the Wind database,Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database,National tax survey enterprise database and prospectuses,and adopting the difference-in-differences estimation method,we conduct an empirical study of how Chinese firms make innovation and patent decisions during their IPO application process.Our main findings are as follows.First,the firm’s number of patent applications increased continuously before its IPO,followed by an abrupt drop right after the IPO and a declining trend afterwards.Second,the pattern above is mainly driven by non-invention patents,which are of lower innovation quality.And our results are robust to addressing the endogeneity problem,investigating changes of overseas applications of patent,and invention patents finally authorized,and excluding the impact of mergers and acquisitions.These patterns provide evidence for the phenomenon that we refer to as IPO patent management,that is,firms manipulate their patent applications around the time of their IPO for financial gains.Our further analysis provides evidence in support of the argument that firms resort to IPO patent management to obtain the opportunity for getting listed and to raise their IPO prices for attracting more funds.We also test the consequences of IPO patent management,including the lower likelihood of patent termination before the date of expiration after IPO and the lower productive efficiency of firms conducting IPO patent management.The policy implications from our empirical findings are as follows.Firstly,the focus on innovation quantity has introduced distortions in the IPO process,leading firms to inflate patent quantity by relying on innovations with lower quality.To remedy this problem,the regulatory agency should focus more on the quality and market value of firm innovations.Secondly,another way to solve the problem is to switch from the approval-based system to the registration-based system,which will reduce the need to rely on quantity measures to allocate IPO quota,thus mitigating the IPO patent management problems.Yet,the design and the implementation of the registration-based system need further improvement,and timely and continuous evaluation is required to provide guidance for future development.Finally,further deepening of the supply-side structural reforms in the financial sector is the fundamental solution to address the financing needs of firm innovation.By constructing a multidimensional and multilevel financial service system that encompasses venture capital,bank credit,bonds,and stocks,a healthy capital market will be established and financial resources will be available to promote authentic innovation and quality development of Chinse firms.In general,this paper makes multifaceted contributions.To begin with,it provides evidence for the existence of IPO patent management for the first time,thus extending the research on earnings management and enriching the literature on firm behaviors during IPO.Given the importance of firm innovation in long-term growth,patent management problems deserve special attention from scholars and practitioners.Secondly,our empirical findings offer a more complete picture of the relationship between IPO and innovation,by studying the dynamics of innovation decisions before and after IPO based on regulatory requirements.This is different from the conventional focus on how IPO affects financial access and corporate governance.Finally,previous studies have explored how industrial policies and institutional arrangements on the secondary market have induced firms’strategic behaviors,while this paper focuses on the relationship between firm innovation and institutional arrangements on the primary financial market and how firms may behave strategically under such arrangements,which expands the research in this field.