آیا حفاظت قوی تر از حقوق مالکیت معنوی منجر به تجارت دو جانبه بیشتر می شود؟ مدارک و شواهد از واردات چین

Most of the previous studies on the trade effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection have been from the perspective of major industrialized nations. However, much of the current debate on the effects of IPR protection involves large developing countries. This study contributes to the literature by analyzing the impact of stronger IPR laws in China on its bilateral trade flows. We estimate the effects of IPR protection on China’s imports at the aggregate and detailed product categories for both developed and developing countries. The empirical results suggest that increased IPR protection stimulates China’s imports, particularly for knowledge-intensive products.

In the past two decades, the nature of the linkages between intellectual property rights (IPR) and international trade has been the source of much debate and controversy. Disagreements persist on whether stronger IPR stimulate or discourage trade. Two key developments contributed to the recent interest in this issue. In the political arena, the status of IPR as a form of trade barrier became an issue of greater global concern after the enactment of a special provision in the US Trade Act of 1988 which linked American trade policy to the prevailing IPR regimes in bilateral trading partner nations. In addition, IPR became even more important when increasing national disputes over IPR led to the multilateral World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) in 1994. Since trade in knowledge-based goods is an important source of innovation and technology for low-income countries, it is not surprising that one of the main issues surrounding the IPR debate was centered on the need for greater IPR protection in developing countries. But despite the importance of IPR laws to developing countries, relatively limited empirical evidence exists on the impact of IPR regimes on bilateral trade flows with developing nations (Leger, 2005 and Schneider, 2005). This study focuses on China as a case study of the impact of strengthened IPR laws on international trade. Although other large developing nations (e.g., Brazil, India, and Mexico) have also upgraded their patent laws to meet international standards, China is a particularly interesting case because of its huge population and significance to the global economy. Also, China is usually at the center of debates about intellectual property violations and has been part of many international disputes with several industrial nations (especially the United States) over IPR infringements (Cheung, 2009). For example, on April 10, 2007, the United States filed a complaint with the WTO with regards to China’s lack of protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights. The complaint listed four areas of concern: (a) clarification on the enforcement thresholds needed for prosecuting acts of trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy; (b) Chinese customs’ disposal of confiscated goods that infringe intellectual property rights; (c) the scope of coverage of criminal procedures and penalties for unauthorized reproduction or distribution of copyrighted works; and (d) the denial of copyright protection and enforcement for creative works that are unauthorized or censored in China (World Trade Organization, 2009 and Zhu and Liu, 2008). The relatively high level of complaints against China’s IPR practices may be an indication of the existing gap between IPR laws on the books and actual enforcement. Dimitrov (2009) contends that “… China has the highest levels of copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting in the world, even though it also provides the highest per capita volume of enforcement.” Unfortunately, there is lack of reliable data on enforcement of IPR laws to allow for rigorous empirical analyses of such issues. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the impact of the strengthening of IPR laws in China on its bilateral trade flows. China’s recent reform of its IPR laws and its status as a large developing nation with a strong threat of imitation makes it an interesting case study on the effect of patent protection on trade. As in previous studies, we also explore the possibility that the trade effect of patent protection may vary by product sectors and by the level of economic development in trading partner countries (Maskus and Penubarti, 1995, Smith, 1999 and Smith, 2001). Since industrialized countries (i.e., major OECD countries) are the main producers of new technology, it could be expected that the strengthening of patent protection in China would have a stronger effect on bilateral trade (import) flows to China from OECD countries relative to import flows from non-OECD countries. The results from this study provide much needed empirical evidence on the current debate regarding policy reforms in IPR regimes and its effects on technology transfer and trade with China. This paper differs from previous studies in several ways. First, this is the first empirical study based on one developing country that experienced significant changes in its IPR systems in the past two decades. Thus, this analysis from the perspective of a large developing country provides an alternative to most previous studies that usually emphasize export flows from a major industrialized nation to a diverse group of importers (Maskus and Penubarti, 1995, Rafiquzzaman, 2002, Smith, 1999 and Smith, 2001). Second, in contrast to studies based on data from a single year, this study uses panel data (1991–2004) that cover a more extended time period and allow for the consideration of the dynamic nature of the relationship between international trade and policy changes in IPR regimes. Third, this paper applies two alternative measures of IPR protection as proxies for IPR regimes: (1) annual patent applications by foreign residents (firms), and (2) Index of Patent Rights developed by Ginarte and Park (1997). It is possible that patent applications, an alternative measure of patent rights, may be more reflective of actual patent activities. Previous studies typically use patent rights indices or scores based on the works of Rapp and Rozek (1990) and Ginarte and Park (1997). These indices usually use a scoring method that is often arbitrary in the choice of weights on the importance of various criteria. Although useful in some cases, the index-based measures of patent rights may not adequately capture the dynamic nature of the interaction between changes in patent laws over time and their potential impact on other economic variables (e.g., trade). When possible, it may be more instructive to use actual data on the number of patent applications over time as adopted in this study. Hence, in addition to adopting the commonly used Index of Patent Rights measure by Ginarte and Park, we also use annual patent applications by foreign residents (or firms) for Chinese patents as a measure of the strength of patent rights protection in China. The growing number of foreign patents filed each year may be a good indicator of growing confidence of foreign firms in the patent rights protection offered in China. This measure of IPR protection accounts for more variation across time and may be less susceptible to measurement errors. The main finding from this study is that the strengthening of patent laws in China led to an increase in its import flows, particularly in knowledge-intensive goods. This paper’s empirical results further support the hypothesis that the strengthening of IPR laws has a strong market expansion effect in China for trade with both OECD countries and non-OECD developing countries. Also, the results suggest that the effects of IPR protection on import flows vary by different product sectors and are strongest in the knowledge-intensive sectors. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 contains an overview of IPR reforms in China and section 3 provides a brief review of empirical literature on the effects of IPR on international trade. Section 4 describes the model specifications and data used in the analysis. Section 5 provides a discussion of results and implications for policy in developing countries and Section 6 concludes the paper.

Although several studies have investigated the effect of IPR protection on international trade from the perspective of major industrialized nations, to our knowledge, no previous analysis have examined this issue from the perspective of a developing nation with strong threat of imitation. In this study, we examine the impact of patent rights protection on China’s aggregate and sectoral imports. Specifically, the analysis provides empirical evidence for addressing these questions of interests: (1) to what extent does the effect of IPR protection vary across various manufacturing product sectors? (2) Does the impact of IPR protection differ between OECD (developed) and non-OECD (developing) countries? This analysis provides new insights on these empirical questions. The empirical results suggest that exporters respond positively to the strengthening of IPR laws in China. This finding further confirms the results from earlier studies that found evidence in support of the market expansion effect of stronger IPR protection in countries with strong threat of imitation. In general, our results show that the market expansion effect is more pronounced in knowledge-intensive sectors than in non-knowledge intensive sectors. Although the effects of IPR protection on technology-driven imports from OECD countries are positive and statistically significant, the evidence for non-OECD countries is relatively stronger for less patent-sensitive products. These results are consistent with the fact that OECD countries are the major producers of knowledge-based outputs and are the major exporters of patent-sensitive products. The impact of IPR policy in stimulating trade in China may have relevance for development policy in other large developing countries, especially those with increasing capacity in technology-intensive production. Given the diversity in size and economic structure of developing economies, our current empirical evidence for China should not be automatically generalized to all developing countries. Nevertheless, an important policy insight from this empirical analysis is that a large developing nation with strong threat of imitation could reap increased bilateral trade benefits from harmonizing and strengthening its IPR laws to conform to international standards as China has done in recent years. Future research would be beneficial in unraveling the complex interactions between trade, FDI, licensing and IPR protection. As more industry and firm level data become available, future analyses may be able to provide more definitive conclusions on the trade effects of IPR protection.