The literature that is specific to joint patenting is scarce. Joint patenting, also known as co-
patenting, is the phenomenon that a patent is claimed ownership by more than one organisation. Joint patent may not be a clear indicator of R&D collaboration, which may “result
in patents with a single owner or no patent at all” (Briggs, 2015, p.1567); rather, it may combine
information on R&D collaboration and IP sharing arrangement (Belderbos et al., 2014).
The literature suggests that the decision to pursue joint ownership of patents rights may be
due to a variety of reasons. First, joint patents may be anticipated outputs of formal
collaborations between partners (Hicks, 2000). Partners may resort to joint patenting when the
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a risk that is caused by abuse of IP rights by the other partner (Teng, 2007). Second, joint
patents may be unanticipated outputs of small scale, informal collaborations between firms
(Belderbos et al., 2014; Hagedoorn, 2003) that are difficult to divide the intellectual property
between the participants. Third, firms that engaged in joint patenting in the past (Hagedoorn,
2003) or have history of successful alliance (Kim and Song, 2007) are more likely to engage
in joint patenting for innovations.
A recent stream of research explores the factors that impact the joint patent quality. Among
them, the effect of co-ownership has been successfully identified as a factor that impact on
joint patent quality. Analysing a panel of 85706 patent observations from 164 firms in the United
States, Europe, and Japan between 1996 and 2003, Belderbos et al. (2014) reported that while
both intra-industry and inter-industry co-ownership yield greater forward citations, the effect of
university co-ownership is insignificant. Using a panel of 141,920 joint patent observations in
150 countries over 31 years, Briggs (2015) found that while multi-country co-ownership positively impact patent quality (assessed as forward citations) in both the short and long term
(three years and over the life of the patent, respectively), university co-ownership is not found
to have an immediate impact but it does enhance the patent quality in the long term. Both the
studies of Belderbos et al. (2014) and Briggs (2015) enhance the current understanding on the
effect of co-ownerships on joint patent quality. Yet, the depth of extant research could reach
further.
Dissimilar from previous research, this research not only explores the factors that account for
heterogeneity in patent quality in an important emerging country – China, but also improves
the econometric analysis in extant research. The analysis looks at 5233 joint patents in China between 1985 and 2010. The likelihood that a joint patent is categorised as “high quality” is
modelled to depend on three key independent variables: 1) the presence of international
partners; 2) the presence of university partners; and 3) the presence of organisational proximity
79 5.2.1 Cross-border co-ownership
Cross-border patent ownership signals international collaboration in patenting activities, which
mainly happened in developed countries, now have observed consistent growth in emerging
economies (Guan and Chen, 2012). International collaboration is believed to serve an
important channel for international knowledge diffusion, enabling the flow of knowledge,
technology, and skills from one country to the other one (Guan and Chen, 2012). Moreover, it
provides a platform for firms to expand their knowledge base, in particular for those pursuing
higher level innovations (Hewitt-Dundas, 2006; Gilsing et al., 2008; Tether, 2002). Zheng et al.
(2012) noted that international collaboration in patenting is necessary in encouraging economic
development and enhancing national competitiveness. Guan and Chen (2012) suggested that
wide and deep international knowledge participation can help emerging countries with their
technology catch-up greatly. At the firm-level, the literature provides a variety of reasons as to
why collaborations with international partners lead to higher quality innovations. First, firms
that collaborate with international partners have access to information that may not be available in the home country, thereby in a better position to achieve more novel
product/service innovation than those who do not. Second, interactions between partners
located in different stages of development can generate unique combinations of resources and
knowledge that lead to novel creations (Briggs, 2015).
5.2.2 University co-ownership
Universities are believed to be the origins of scientific knowledge, where basic and applied
research are their strengths (Hemmert, 2004; Perkmann et al., 2013). Baba et al. (2009) noted
that in industries where university collaboration is the dominant source of knowledge, firms that
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ownership with universities on joint patent quality is both theoretically and empirically
ambiguous in the wake of two opposing schools of thought.
The first school of thought underlines a variety of benefits collaborate with the academia. First, university collaboration can help lower firms’ search costs since universities have experienced
faculty staff, established research facilities, and strong track record of publishing scientific
findings in certain areas such as chemistry and biology. Second, there are less disputes over co-developed knowledge created during university-firm collaborations, because “the business
of universities is not to compete with companies but to ‘educating people, developing their
faculty and doing basic research” (Belderbos, 2014, pp. 843). Third, firms’ problem-solving
skills and the ability to search and integrate external knowledge can be enhanced via close
interactions with universities. The interactive learning enables firms to not only capture the
skills of learning and tacit knowledge of the field, but also to understand the mind-set of
university inventors so as to allocate right resources and adjust strategies to foster the collaboration. In the Chinese context, the pro-university school is represented by Chen and
Kenney (2007) and Hu and Matthews (2008), who suggest that universities in China have been making great contribution to the country’s economic development.
An opposing school of thought suggests that collaboration with universities do not result in
satisfactory performance. Funk (2013) suggested that joint patent quality is sensitive to
ownership relations. Lhuillery and Pfister (2009) found that firms conducting research with universities are more likely to face delay or even ‘cooperation failure’ than with suppliers or
customers due to the divided opinions in managing deadlines, technological distance, and
intellectual property rights. Using French innovation data, Monjon and Waelbroeck (2003)
found a negative relationship between collaborations with universities and product innovation
81 5.2.3 The Presence of Organisational Proximity
The role of organisational proximity has been widely discussed in the literature on inter-
organisational collaboration (e.g. Knoben and Oerlemans, 2006) and innovation (e.g. Capaldo
and Petruzzelli, 2014). The concept has been defined in slightly different ways. Example of a
narrow definition is by Oerlemans and Meeus (2005), who define organisational proximity as “actors that belong to the same space of relations”. A broader definition is given by Torre and
Rallet (2005), as “actors whose interactions are facilitated by rules and routines of behaviour
and that share a same system of representations, or set of beliefs”. In this chapter, the
definition of organisational proximity is defined as actors that belong to the same parent
organisation.
Theoretically, the seminal work of Boschma (2005) argues that while a moderate level of
organisational proximity is beneficial for learning and innovation, too much organisational
proximity leads to the opposite. Empirically, Broekel and Boschma (2011) show that while
organisational proximity was important driver of alliance formation, it does not lead to superior
innovation performance. Cassi and Plunket (2013) find similar empirical evidence that organisational proximity was not conductive to innovative performance of firms. Analysing a
sample of 1515 R&D alliances, Capaldo and Petruzzelli (2014) show that both geographic
distance and organisational proximity negatively affect the innovative performance of the
alliances. However, the two characteristics positively affect the innovative performance of
alliances when jointly considered, showing that the two characteristics are contingent upon
one another.
The literature on proximity and innovation in China is scarce. A study of Liang and Zhu (2002)
is among the few existing studies show that geographical proximity (distance) is an important
facilitator (barrier) of inter-regional research collaboration in China. Analysing a panel of
Chinese patent data from 1985 to 2004, Hong and Su (2013) show that although geographical
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institutional proximity between partners. In all, the role of organisational proximity is under-
studied in the literature specific to joint patenting.