حقوق مالکیت معنوی و نوآوری در کشورهای در حال توسعه

This paper studies intellectual property rights (IPRs) and innovation in developing countries. A model is developed to illustrate the trade-off between imitating foreign technologies and encouraging domestic innovation in a developing country's choice of IPRs. It is shown that innovations in a developing country increase in its IPRs, and a country's IPRs can depend on its level of development non-monotonically, first decreasing and then increasing. Empirical analysis, with a panel of data for 64 developing countries, confirms both the positive impact of IPRs on innovations in developing countries and the presence of a U-shaped relationship between IPRs and economic development.

The protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in developing countries has been a much debated issue in recent years. This debate is often placed in a North–South framework, where the predominant view is that southern (developing) countries tend to lose from protecting IPRs. The static and partial equilibrium reason for this loss is that IPRs protection will strengthen the market power of northern innovating firms and raise prices in developing countries (Chin and Grossman, 1990 and Deardorff, 1992).1 But even when dynamic and general equilibrium factors are accounted for, the South need not benefit from increasing IPRs, partly due to the adverse terms-of-trade effect and the possible slowing down of northern innovations over time (Helpman, 1993). In fact, Helpman concludes: “Who benefits from tight intellectual property rights in less developed countries? My analysis suggests that if anyone benefits, it is not the South.” (Helpman, 1993, pp. 1274) There are, however, several arguments of why developing countries need to increase their protections of IPRs. First, as Diwan and Rodrik (1991) argue, northern and southern countries generally have different technology needs and, without the southern protection of IPRs, northern countries would not develop technologies largely needed by the South. Second, northern firms may react to the lack of IPRs in the South by making their technologies more difficult to imitate, which can result in less efficient research technology and less northern innovation (Taylor, 1993, Taylor, 1994 and Yang and Maskus, 2001). Third, even if greater protection of IPRs does not directly benefit the South, it could still increase world welfare; therefore, there are gains from international cooperation that tightens IPRs in developing countries. In fact, issues on trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) have been a key element in the WTO negotiations, and strengthening of IPRs is often a condition for a developing country's entry to the WTO (Maskus, 2000). Importantly, even these arguments for strong southern IPRs seem to suggest that, were it not for strategic reactions or pressures from the North, the southern developing countries would have little incentive to protect IPRs.2 This paper offers an alternative perspective on the protection of IPRs in developing countries. We shall argue that even if strategic behavior of or pressures from the North is not a concern, a developing country may still want to protect IPRs, for domestic economic considerations. In particular, there may be domestic innovative activities that would rise under stronger IPRs. For such an economy, there could be an optimal level of IPRs, which balances the trade-off between facilitating the imitation of northern advanced technologies and providing incentives for domestic innovations. To motivate this approach, we note that while most innovations originate from the North, there are substantial innovative activities in many developing countries, as measured by patent applications filed in these countries by domestic inventors.3 For instance, during 1985–1995, the number of such applications was 2757 in Brazil, 1545 in India, 5549 in South Africa, and 59,249 in South Korea; as compared to 9325 in Australia, 3039 in Canada, 335,061 in Japan, and 127,476 in the US during the same period. Furthermore, although collectively IPRs in the South can significantly affect northern innovation incentives, the effect of a single developing country may be negligible, as has been noticed by Yang (1998); and such a country may take the northern innovation as exogenous. We consider a model of a (small) developing country that has two sectors, an import sector and a local sector. The import sector consists of a (northern) foreign firm and a domestic firm. The foreign firm has a patented technology that allows it to produce a product of a higher quality than can be produced by the domestic firm. However, the domestic firm can raise its product quality by imitating the northern technology, and its ability to do so depends on the level of IPRs in this country. The local sector consists of two domestic firms, one of which has the ability to develop a patentable new technology that improves the product quality, while the other local firm can imitate the new technology. Increased protection of IPRs makes imitation in both sectors more difficult, which has different effects on the country's welfare. In the import sector, less imitation means lower product quality of the domestic firm and thus less competition for and higher price of the foreign firm. As a result, there is a reduction of consumer surplus and (domestic) social surplus. In the local sector, less imitation means more incentive for the domestic innovating firm to invest in a higher-quality technology (more innovation), which leads to more efficient investment and to a higher social surplus. In a game where the government first chooses the level of IPRs, followed by investment of the domestic innovating firm and then by production in both sectors, we show that the optimal protection of IPRs balances this basic trade-off. In equilibrium, the incentive to innovate by the domestic firm increases with IPRs protection. Furthermore, there exist plausible situations where, starting from a low level of development, increases in the level of development lower IPRs initially but raise IPRs after a certain point. Thus, a developing country's preferred levels of IPRs can exhibit a U-shaped curve with respect to its levels of economic development, given the advanced technologies of the North. The possible existence of an empirical U-shaped curve between IPRs and per capita GNP has been noticed by Maskus (2000) and by Primo Braga et al. (2000). However, to the best of our knowledge, ours is the first formal model that provides a theoretical explanation for such a (possible) empirical relationship. Starting from low levels of economic development, an initial increase in a country's technological ability has a greater impact on the efficiency of imitating northern technologies than on the efficiency of domestic innovations, which makes it desirable for the country to lower IPRs. Once the country's technological ability is above a certain threshold, the imitation effect is dominated by the innovation effect, and the optimal protection of IPRs increases with the levels of development.4 While it is important to develop new theoretical insights, it is also interesting to know whether the theoretical possibilities suggested by our model are supported by empirical evidence. To investigate this we use a panel of data for developing countries that provide measures of IPRs and innovation. Our empirical analysis departs from the literature in several respects. First, other empirical studies on the relationship between IPRs and innovations/growth, including Deolalikar and Lars-Hendrik (1989), Gould and Gruben (1997), Lach (1995), Park and Ginarte (1997), Thompson and Rushing, 1996 and Thompson and Rushing, 1999, Maskus and McDaniel (1999) and Crosby (2000), have mostly focused on developed countries or pooled data on both developed and developing countries. Our analysis provides new evidence on developing countries. Second, while there are notable exceptions, such as Ginarte and Park (1997), Maskus (2000), and Maskus and Penubarti (1995), most existing studies have taken IPRs as exogenous. As our theoretical analysis shows, a rational developing country will choose an optimal level of IPRs, depending on its level of economic development. We thus treat IPRs as endogenous. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find some evidence that innovations in developing countries are indeed positively and significantly impacted by IPRs, and the levels of IPRs exhibit a U-shaped relationship with per capita GDP. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 illustrates our main idea through a simple model and derives our theoretical implications. Section 3 discusses our data and conducts the empirical analysis. Concluding remarks are contained in Section 4.

This paper has conducted a theoretical and empirical analysis of intellectual property rights and innovation in developing countries. While lower IPRs facilitate imitations of foreign technologies, which reduces the market power of foreign firms and benefits domestic consumers, a developing country may also need to increase IPRs in order to encourage innovations by domestic firms. We show that innovation in a developing country increases with the protection of IPRs, and it is possible that a country's optimal IPRs depend on its level of development (technological ability) in a non-monotonic way, first decreasing and then increasing. We evaluate these theoretical results empirically, using a panel data set including 64 developing countries over the 1975–2000 period. The empirical evidence confirms both the positive impact of IPRs on innovations in developing countries and the presence of a U-shaped relationship between IPRs and levels of economic development. The conventional wisdom on IPRs has been that a developing country tends to lose from increasing IPRs and, if it does increase its protection for IPRs, it is due to pressures from the developed world. In other words, if there is a trade off for a developing country in its choice of IPRs, it is largely the need to gain access to foreign technologies/markets against the benefits from imitation. In this paper, we have focused on a different trade-off: the need to facilitate imitation and the need to provide incentives for domestic innovation. We believe that the benefits from IPRs to a developing country are actually much more than encouraging domestic innovation in the narrow sense. As Stiglitz (1989) has suggested, the lack of a functioning market system could be the biggest obstacle to the development of an economy. The respect for property rights in general, and for IPRs in particular, can be crucial for the establishment of a well-functioning market system and can thus be crucial to economic development.22 The positive effects of IPRs on domestic innovations, therefore, should be viewed as part of broader effects on entrepreneurial activities.23 Our analysis suggests a range of common interests between the North and the South in promoting IPRs in the South. This is not to say that there exists no conflict in their interests; in fact, our theory suggests that there could be less incentive to protect IPRs for countries with lower innovative abilities (lower levels of development). But as more developing countries recognize the importance of encouraging entrepreneurial (innovative) activities by domestic firms, the range of common interests between developing and developed countries in promoting IPRs will broaden. Thus, in the long-run, perhaps the best way for the North to promote IPRs in the South is to help the South increase innovative activities.