专利丛林对企业市场价值影响的非均衡研究

A non-equilibrium study of the impact of patent thicket on corporate market value

专利丛林导致互补性专利无法有效集中在单个企业,从而增加企业获取这些专利的成本,折损企业市场价值,尤其是影响市值低的企业日益突显。为了厘清专利丛林对企业市场价值影响机理,推动我国企业专利高质量发展。本文基于专利丛林影响企业市场价值的“非均衡”效应和专利资产抑制效应的情境因素,结合我国419家计算机、通信和其他电子设备制造业企业为样本,采用分位数回归估计,得出以下结论:(1)专利丛林对企业市场价值起到减损作用;(2)企业市场价值处于不同的分位点上,专利丛林对企业市场价值负效应存在“非均衡”态势;(3)专利资产会抑制专利丛林对企业市场价值的负效应。研究结果从资源使用的情境因素视角构建了识别专利丛林对企业市场价值不同分位的影响差异和专利资产的调节机制,为我国企业应对专利丛林提供了理论建议。

Based on the"non-equilibrium"situation of patent thicket affecting the market value of enterprises and the situational factors of the inhibitory effect of patent assets,this study took 419 computer,communication,and other electronic equipment manufacturing enterprises in China as samples,and used quantile regression estimation to obtain the following conclusions:The number of patent applications of Chinese enterprises has shown a"blowout"growth,which highlights the importance of patents in promoting the market value of enterprises.However,enterprises have ignored the"devil"side of patents-the negative effect of"patent thicket".The"patent thicket"refers to the existence of a large number of patents in the industry,and the patents of a single patentee form a complementary relationship with the cited patents,but different patentees hold these cited patents.If companies want to obtain these complementary patents,they must pay a large number of patent license fees.The original intention of intellectual property protection is to provide"external incentives"for corporate innovation and to make patents a"booster"for corporate competition and profit.However,suppose the patents required by an enterprise are scattered among different patent holders.In that case,the enterprise will instead face increased innovation costs,reduced technology spillover effects,and increased external resource constraints.It can be seen that the"patent thicket"will affect the market value of enterprises.The existing literature on the relationship between patent thicket and enterprise market value mainly focuses on the following aspects:(1)"Fragmented"patent rights are easy to derive patent ripping off,which will reduce the market value of enterprises;and(2)Different mechanisms of patent thickets on the market value of enterprises.They also have the following deficiencies:(1)There is a lack of research on the relationship between the patent thicket and the market value of enterprises in the context of China;(2)The moderating effect of patent assets is ignored in the patent thicket study on enterprises′market value;and(3)There is a lack of discussion on the differences in the moderating effects of different types of patent assets.Based on the shortcomings of the previous literature,this study firstly followed the theoretical logic of"resource structure-heterogeneous resources-performance",and took 419 listed companies in China′s computer,communication,and other electronic equipment manufacturing industries as research samples to analyze the effect of the patent thicket on the enterprise market and the influence mechanism of value;secondly,it analyzed the adjustment mechanism of enterprise patent assets in different market value quantiles of enterprises,and the adjustment difference of different types of patent assets.Through expansion of the existing research,this paper drew the following conclusions and theoretical contributions:firstly,as the quantile of the firm′s market value increases,the negative effect of the patent thicket on the firm′s market value increases.This study verified that in the context of China,there is a"non-equilibrium"state in which patent thicket restricts the promotion of enterprise market value,and extends the research on the relationship between patent thicket and enterprise market value.Secondly,patent assets can positively adjust the negative impact of patent thickets and help companies increase market value.The research enriches and expands the research of resource-based theory through the differences in the moderating effect of patent assets on the impact of patent thickets on different companies′market value quantiles under the constraints of patent thickets.At the same time,the moderating effect of patent assets is examined from a more comprehensive perspective.Although previous literature has studied the moderating effect of patent assets,it has not broken down the types of patent assets.China′s patent system is different from that of the United States.Utility model patents account for a large proportion,while invention patents are more valuable and innovative than utility model patents.One of the contributions of the research is that combined with the characteristics of China′s patent system,patent assets are divided into invention patents and utility models,and integrated into the research framework of the relationship between patent thicket and enterprise market value,through the interaction effect test of these two patent assets and patent dispersion index.This paper analyzes the adjustment differences of different types of patent assets on the impact of patent thickets on the market value of enterprises.Finally,this study started from the three aspects of the"non-equilibrium"situation of the influence effect of the patent thicket,the market value of enterprises,and the maintenance time of patents,examined the situational factors of patent assets regulating the effect of the patent thicket on the market value of enterprises,and expanded the research on patent thicket.An important research conclusion is that in the dense environment of patent thickets,companies with high market value quantiles need to maintain the effectiveness of their patent assets more than companies with low market value quantiles to ensure that companies can obtain profits.