Do foreign patent-protection rights promote domestic R&D spending? : Droits de protection que confèrent les brevets étrangers stimulent-ils les dépenses nationales en R-D? : l'expérience des entreprises canadiennes

The rise of the knowledge economy and the globalization of markets have put IPR at the centre of discussion. [...] The 2013 annual report produced by the European Patent Office and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market confirms that from 2008 to 2010, R&D-intensive industries accounted for 89 percent of the EU’s total trade, but only 72 percent of the trade deficit, indicating a positive contribution to the trade balance. [...] As a proxy for innovation, Schneider (2005) used the number of successful patent applications in the United States and found that stronger IPR positively affected the rate of innovation for developed countries, while the relationship between IPR and innovation was weakly and inversely related in developing countries. [...] For instance, the theoretical framework of Branstetter and Saggi (2011) provides a North–South model that shows the positive impact of strengthening the South’s IPR on Northern innovation, whereas the theoretical model of Dinopoulus and Segerstrom (2010) suggests that strengthening the target country’s IPR causes temporary increases in domestic innovation. [...] In perhaps the first empirical paper that examines the link between foreign IPR and domestic innovation, Qiu and Yu (2010) examine the impact of foreign IPR on successful patent applications in the United States.