ثبت اختراع در خارج از کشور: شواهد از کشورهای OECD  Patenting abroad: Evidence from OECD countries

1. Introduction The world experienced an unprecedented internationalization of economic activity during the last three decades. International trade and foreign direct investment dominated this internationalization assisting, among others, the developing countries to accelerate their growth rates (e.g. Schneider, 2005). Internationalization, on the other hand, led to the re-allocation of global economic activity, with OECD countries becoming gradually knowledge and technology oriented economies. In this environment, inventors from a country faced the dilemma of expanding the protection of their invention in foreign countries. As a result of the trend in international patenting during the last two decades, as Paci et al. (1997) note, firms in developed countries aim at the commercial exploitation of their invention in foreign countries either through exports or through licensing. Royalties and licence fees become more and more an important source of international income (Beattie, 2012) and, accordingly, the decisions of these inventors are affected by the intellectual property rights protection framework of the destination country. Research has moved towards identifying the factors on which this decision might depend on, given the difficulty to identify the determinants of patent value (e.g. (Ernst et al., 2010; Petrick and Echols, 2004). A track of the literature has followed Eaton and Kortum (1996) who argue that imitation risk plays a significant role in the decision to patent in a foreign country. Another track of the literature has followed Smith (1999, 2001) who related the decision to export to a destination country with the intellectual property rights protection framework in this country.