Trade-related influences, foreign intellectual property rights and outbound international patenting

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the national determinants of outbound international patenting, particularly focusing on the roles of trade-related influences and the destination countries’ strength of intellectual property protection. Based on cross-patenting from 30 member countries in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) between 1995 and 1998, empirical results suggest that the behavior of outbound international patenting is strongly and positively associated with trade-related influences, like exports and outward foreign direct investments. Moreover, controlling for other variables, a country with stronger protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) tends to force more foreign inventors to file for patent applications, lending a supportive view of cross-country evidence for the strong-IPR hypothesis.