نقض قوانین مالکیت معنوی با توجه به R & D خارج از کشور؟ تجزیه و تحلیل مقایسه بین شرکت هایی که فعالیت های نوآوری بین المللی و فعالیت های نوآوری در داخل کشور دارند

This paper aims to analyse the risk of intellectual property (IP) infringements by competitors from abroad and in particular to consider whether this risk is higher for international innovating firms. We distinguish three different types of IP infringements from abroad: the usage of firms’ technical inventions, product piracy, and copying of corporate names and designs. Our analysis rests on the German data from the Europe-wide Community Innovation Survey (CIS). We use a unique data set of about 900 observations, which are retrieved from two survey waves. While the earlier wave contains information about international and domestic innovation activities, the later wave reports IP infringements. In a second analysis, the likelihood of infringements from innovation host countries and no-innovation host countries abroad is examined. Before the empirical analysis, an exploratory study was carried out in China with interviews of German firms with innovation activities in China and with a legal advisor for small and medium-sized German enterprises. The results show that firms with international R&D activities are increasing their chances of losing technological knowledge to their local competitors abroad. R&D activities in countries with weak intellectual property rights increase the risk for all types of IP infringements compared to domestic R&D activities. Infringements by competitors from the host country are driven by the production of new produces in this country. Export intensity is the major driver of infringements from no-innovation host countries. R&D activities in China and North America also increase the risk of an infringement. However, firms that innovate only in their home country experience significantly more product piracy cases than international innovating firms.

The internationalisation of corporate R&D activities enables firms to better serve customers abroad with customised products. R&D activities in customers’ countries allow firms to react more quickly to local demands and supply customers in the host country as an authentic ‘local’ firm (Porter, 1980). Firms with international R&D centres further benefit from internalising foreign talents and expertise into their knowledge base. Many firms have realised the potential of international R&D activities and contributed to the persistent trend of internationalising their innovation strategies (UNCTAD, 2005). This trend is also spurred by emerging economies that have large numbers of university graduates and a growing importance in firms’ market portfolios, and therefore increasingly appear as desired corporate innovation locations (Rammer and Schmiele, 2008). The internationalisation of corporate R&D activities is often associated with a loss of control over technological knowledge and other core competences. Foreign business environments can be very different culturally and legally in comparison to the home country and challenge the operations of international firms. In particular, for firms that carry out R&D activities abroad, the weakness of the intellectual property (IP) protection system can hamper their innovative efforts. The intellectual property right (IPR) standards often do not follow the economic development of some emerging countries such as China. Firms have to balance the attractiveness of a greater market size with customised innovative products against the risk of knowledge loss from their innovative efforts. To evaluate this risk, this paper analyses whether firms with innovation activities abroad face a higher risk of experiencing IP infringements from abroad than firms that have innovation activities solely in their home country. Following the Oslo Manual (OECD/Eurostat, 2005) innovation activities comprise all scientific, technological, organisational, financial and commercial activities which lead (or are intended to lead) to the implementation of innovations. Innovation activities also include R&D that can be less related to the development of a specific innovation. In this vein, another contribution of this paper is to distinguish between different types of innovation activities abroad (R&D, conception/design of new products, production of new products, implementation of new processes). Further, we observe different types of IP infringements (infringement of inventions, product piracy, usage of firm name and designs). We are able to identify whether the IP infringement by competitors from abroad stems from a firm's innovation host country or from another country abroad. The distinction between host country and no-host country IP infringement can explain whether localised innovation activities, signalling effects or foreign market presence foster IP infringements. Prior to the empirical analysis, an exploratory study on firms with innovation and business activities abroad was carried out. In interviews, the organisations that hold patents and trademarks commented on their experience with IP infringements from abroad. This so-called triangulation approach, the combination of different data sets and research methods, allows us to gain a wider and deeper understanding of the topic (Jick, 1979). The qualitative study can lead to conclusions which the empirical analysis would not reveal (Jick, 1979) and can make important contributions to the empirical study. The outline of this paper is as follows: Section 2 will introduce previous work and related theoretical approaches in this field of research. In Section 3, we present the results of the exploratory study and frame the research questions accordingly in Section 4. Subsequently, in Section 5, an empirical study, which is based on a large sample of German firms, investigates whether the findings from the exploratory study hold for a sample of about 900 innovative firms from Germany, of which approximately 500 firms had international innovation activities. Section 6 provides the empirical results and Section 7 provides the conclusions and implications of this research work.

This paper investigated the relationship between international innovation activities and their propensity to provoke intellectual property infringements by foreign firms. The literature offers a stream of research studies on how R&D creates international spillovers and that the foreign business environment inhibits extraordinary risks which lead to higher costs due to foreign-owned firms’ foreignness. In an exploratory study in China, we found that firms are experiencing IP infringements but that these cases are manageable. The results from two empirical analyses have shown that international R&D activities of firms have only weakly significant effects and only for technological infringements. It is evident that technological knowledge is most important in many sectors. The results show that IP infringements of technological knowledge cannot be avoided by carefully choosing the host innovation countries. Weak intellectual property regimes significantly clear the way to all kinds of IP infringements, while strong IPR countries are territories for technological infringements. However, even firms which have only national innovation activities are significantly more at risk of experiencing foreign product piracy. China, Russia and India are the worldwide main sources of counterfeit and pirated products (OECD, 2008). In addition, in our empirical analysis, the foreign-owned R&D activities in China lead to firm name infringements, while innovation activities in China but also in North America lead to infringements from these host countries. A larger scope of international innovation activities abroad has significantly stronger effects on IP infringements from innovation host countries than single innovation activities. Following the results, one conclusion that can be drawn is that firms which only have R&D centres abroad to develop new technologies and products are less at risk to be infringed than firms that embody their innovative knowledge in products abroad. About 10% of the firms with international innovation activities in our data set have experienced IP infringements from countries in which they have localised no innovation activities. The results of this paper suggest that this is caused by the strong effects of firms’ export intensity. Nevertheless, the paper has some limitations. An interesting aspect within this research framework would have been to analyse different types of IP infringements from certain countries and how they are influenced by R&D and innovation activities in these countries. However, due to data constraints, it is not possible to split the data set into two dimensions, location and type of IP infringement. A further shortcoming is that some firms reported international R&D and innovation activities but did not specify the foreign locations. Consequently, the direct match between foreign innovation locations and the origin of IP infringements is often not possible and leads to a smaller number of dependent variables for the second analysis. The survey information does not allow us to draw conclusions about the type of R&D, in the sense of knowledge augmenting or knowledge exploiting (Kuemmerle, 1997) activities that have been carried out in the foreign R&D departments.