حفاظت مالکیت معنوی مناسب و رشد اقتصادی در کشورهای در سطوح مختلف توسعه

This paper examines how the role of patents and utility models in innovation and economic growth varies by level of economic development. Using a panel dataset of over 70 countries, we find that patent protection is an important determinant of innovation and that patentable innovations contribute to economic growth in developed countries, but not in developing. Instead, in developing economies, a minor form of intellectual property rights (IPRs) – namely utility models – is conducive to innovation and growth, controlling for other factors. Using Korean firm level data as a case study, we find that utility model innovations contribute to firm performance when firms are technologically lagging and that those minor innovations can be a learning device and thus a stepping stone for developing more patentable inventions later on. Upon reaching higher levels of technological capabilities, firms become more reliant upon patents and less on utility models. Thus the lesson here is that patent protection enhances innovation and economic growth in countries where the capacity to conduct innovative research exists. Where this capacity is weaker, a system that provides incentives to conduct minor, incremental inventions is more conducive to growth. The significance of this paper is to emphasize the importance not just of the strength of IPRs but of the appropriate type of IPRs for economic development.

This paper addresses the role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the economic growth of countries at different levels of economic development. It addresses two issues. The first is whether stronger IPRs, particularly patent rights, are appropriate for the economic growth of countries regardless of their stage of economic development. The second, and related, issue is whether the same types of intellectual properties are appropriate for countries at different levels of economic development. The possibility that IPRs could have differential effects on countries at different stages of economic development has been acknowledged in a World Bank publication (Fink and Maskus, 2005) and partly addressed in global intellectual property reforms (see Commission on IPR, 2002). For example, transitional periods were provided for developing and least developed countries. In addition, extensions to comply with the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) have also been granted to poor countries (until 2013). Local circumstances and needs have also been addressed, for example in policies related to essential medicines and public health. Our contribution is to study not only the strength of IPRs but also the different types of IPRs that would be appropriate for countries at different stages of economic development. Our starting point is that innovation in many developing countries is of the adaptive, imitative type. Under the intellectual property systems of certain countries, inventors of adaptive, imitative innovations can have their inventions protected, for example through a utility model (or petty patent). Through adaptation, imitation, and incremental innovation, firms in developing economies can acquire knowledge and enjoy some learning-by-doing ( Suthersanen, 2006). The innovations they produce may not have the inventive step to merit a regular patent, but they may qualify for this second-tier industrial property right; namely, a utility model. The absence of this type of industrial property right may reduce incentives to engage in incremental innovation, which may be more suitable for local needs, a stepping stone for further technological progress, and the type of innovation which best utilizes local capabilities. To date, there have been no formal, comprehensive empirical analyses of patents and utility models from a development perspective. In academic and policy debates, whether in the context of developed or developing countries, the focus has been on the appropriate strength of IPRs.1 While the original TRIPS agreement does not deal with utility models, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has recently considered the usefulness of utility model systems for lower income countries. 2 Our study should therefore generate further interest in examining alternative means of protecting IPRs at the international level. Indeed our empirical analysis studies the different roles of patents and utility models in the innovation and economic growth of countries at different levels of economic development, and discusses why these different types of industrial property rights may be more appropriate for different groups of countries. We first conduct our analysis using a large panel data set of countries to assess the impact of utility model laws. We then isolate one developing country in our sample, namely South Korea, in order to conduct a specific case study. Korea's case is illuminating. Due to its limited technological capability before the mid-1980s, it depended heavily on reverse engineering, importation of technology, and imitation in order to fulfill its technological needs (Kim, 1997). Moreover, local inventors tended to modify or adapt existing or imported technologies, and obtained utility model protection for their incremental innovations. By the late 1990s, Korea became one of the world's leading patenting nations. For example, U.S. patents granted to Koreans rose from 14 in 1982 to 3562 in 1999, and the share of Koreans in U.S. patents granted rose from 0.01% to 2.32% (USPTO, 2009). By 1999, Korea ranked seventh in terms of U.S. patents granted. The question is whether all of these events are connected: did utility model protection provide incentives to innovate and help pave the way for increased technological development? As an overview, our main finding is that the importance of patent rights and utility model protection to innovation and growth varies by level of technological development. We find that patent protection contributes to innovation and economic growth in developed countries but not in developing. This is consistent with the view that patent protection matters to industrial activities only after countries have achieved a threshold level of indigenous innovative capacity along with an extensive science and technology infrastructure (Kim, 1997 and Lall and Albaladejo, 2001). In contrast, utility model protection weakly affects innovation and growth in developed countries but allows developing economies to build up their indigenous innovative capacities. In our analysis of Korean firms, we find that when firms are technologically lagging, utility models (or minor inventions) contribute to firm growth and to their capacity to produce (future) patentable inventions. Once firms become more technologically advanced, their performance is driven less by utility model innovations and more by patentable innovations. These results thus indicate that different types of intellectual property rights are more appropriate for countries at different stages of economic development. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 reviews previous studies on the effects of IPRs on innovation and economic growth. Section 3 provides a brief comparison between patent rights and utility models, and briefly discusses the experience of utility model protection in Korea. Section 4 discusses our theoretical framework and empirical methodology, and Section 5 our data. Section 6 contains the main empirical results, and Section 7 concludes.

This paper extends previous empirical research on the effects of intellectual property protection on innovation and economic growth by focusing on the relative role of two types of protection: patents and utility models. We exploited both country level and firm level data. The results from both datasets are complementary. First, in high income economies, differences in economic growth and innovation can be explained by variations in patent rights, but not by variations in the provision of utility models, controlling for other variables. In middle-to-low income countries, the reverse is the case. Correspondingly, in the Korean firm level data, patentable innovations matter positively and significantly to firm growth, while utility model innovations matter insignificantly, when firms are technologically advanced. The reverse is the case when firms are technologically lagging: utility model innovations matter positively and significantly to firm growth while patentable innovations do not. Furthermore, utility model innovations can be an important input into the generation of future patentable innovations. Thus the chief lesson in this paper is that what matters to innovation and growth is not only the strength of intellectual property rights but also the type of protection. For example, the availability of legal protection for minor, adaptive inventions should be most useful to firms with low technological capacities and limited resources. In developing markets, patents raise the cost of doing business and innovation. This cost tends to be more onerous for lower income economies. In contrast, a utility model system provides an alternative way for such economies to create incentives for innovation, albeit incremental, without affecting the cost of doing business adversely, and while providing the technological inputs appropriate for local needs. For more developed firms and firms with better access to resources, such as those in the more developed countries, patent protection plays a more important role in the innovation process than do utility model laws. The longer terms and wider breadth associated with patents provide incentives to create and commercialize innovations with larger inventive steps. The experience of Korean firms and the country level analyses suggest that the design and strength of intellectual property systems should be tailored to the indigenous technological capacities of firms in order to best provide the appropriate incentives for innovation. Current academic and policy debates have largely focused on the effects of strong patents and copyrights, of raising developing country standards to developed country levels, and restricting imitation, piracy, and infringement in developing countries. Less attention has been paid towards the effects of other types of IPRs and the growth-enhancing capacity of imitative innovation. Future research could explore other national case studies (say other developing countries in Asia or Latin America) to examine their experiences with the different types of IPRs, such as utility models, industrial designs, trade secrets, copyrights, or trademarks. Secondly, it would be useful to investigate the issues by sector; for example, agriculture, electronics, and machinery.