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This paper investigates how increased examination workloads at patent office affect the patent examination process and tests whether workloads have any external effect on examiners' decisions. Using novel micro-level data, we provide the first empirical evidence that examiner decisions are systematically biased as workload increases, with examiners being more likely to grant a patent than to reject it. The regression results also indicate that the quality of examinations decreases as workload increases. In appeal trials, the likelihood of grant decision reversal significantly increases as workload increases, while the likelihood of the revocation of a refusal decision exhibits statistically significant negative relationship with increased workloads. These results imply that an examiner who lacks sufficient time for a prior art search tends to grant a patent and, consequently, a large workload decreases the quality of examinations by resulting in unqualified patents.

This paper conducts country-panel econometric analysis with a focus on the different roles of scientific and technological knowledge on economic growth and on the knowledge production functions. It finds that it is not scientific knowledge (academic articles) but technological knowledge (patents) that matters for economic growth, and that generating scientific knowledge does not automatically lead to the generation of technological knowledge. We find that technological knowledge is primarily determined by corporate research and development efforts, which used to be more lacking in Latin American countries, compared with East Asia. This finding sheds new light on the question of why Latin American and East Asian countries have shown such divergent economic performances.

Lee and Kim analyze the NIS of East Asia and Latin America, and to show the sources of the divergent economic performance in these groups of countries. This divergence between East Asia and Latin America reflects that these two regions selected different policy priority in knowledge development; the priority was given to technology in East Asia whereas it was given to science in Latin America. The main characteristic of R&D expenditure in Latin America is that universities and public labs are taking up most of the R&D but they are decoupled from the demands from the private sector. The role of Latin America’s private sectors remains weak, and the difference in corporate R&D among the East Asian countries and Latin American countries are substantial. East Asia and Latin America initially imported foreign technologies, but only East Asia has been able to build up its indigenous technological capabilities. One of the reasons for this difference is that in East Asia, the domestic corporate sectors were the main agents of technology imports, whereas the trans-national corporations were the main agents for production in Latin America. R&D investment by TNCs in Latin America was mainly carried out in their home countries, and the TNCs sought to protect their technologies by confining it within the boundary of the TNCs [Hanson (Economic Development, Education and Transnational Corporations, Routledge, p. 54, 2008)]. Emerging new technologies in short cycle fields present better growth prospects, and the possibility of higher profitability associated with less collision with the technologies of advanced countries and the presence of first-mover advantages. This divergence in technological specialization can be considered as one explanation how the Asian countries went beyond the middle income trap situation in the mid-1980s, whereas Latin American countries failed to overcome the trap. The view of Lee and Kim based on short or long cycle times also differs from the traditional recommendation to focus on trade-based specialization, which is more suitable for low-income countries, because it argues that middle-income countries need to specialize in technological sectors that rely less on existing technologies, and look at the greater opportunities associated with new technologies. It is also complementary to the growth identification and facilitation framework of Justin Lin (New Structural Economics: A framework for Rethinking Development and Policy‚ Washington, DC, The World Bank 2012).

This paper examines how the role of patents and utility models in innovation and economic growth varies by level of economic development. Using a panel dataset of over 70 countries, we find that patent protection is an important determinant of innovation and that patentable innovations contribute to economic growth in developed countries, but not in developing. Instead, in developing economies, a minor form of intellectual property rights (IPRs) – namely utility models – is conducive to innovation and growth, controlling for other factors. Using Korean firm level data as a case study, we find that utility model innovations contribute to firm performance when firms are technologically lagging and that those minor innovations can be a learning device and thus a stepping stone for developing more patentable inventions later on. Upon reaching higher levels of technological capabilities, firms become more reliant upon patents and less on utility models. Thus the lesson here is that patent protection enhances innovation and economic growth in countries where the capacity to conduct innovative research exists. Where this capacity is weaker, a system that provides incentives to conduct minor, incremental inventions is more conducive to growth. The significance of this paper is to emphasize the importance not just of the strength of IPRs but of the appropriate type of IPRs for economic development.

The current paper attempts to explore the employees’ inventor compensation plan in Korea using a comprehensive data set of Korean inventor survey in 2009. It aims to empirically examine the effect of the compensation plan on the innovations of Korean inventors. This paper finds that the compensation plan has a positive link with inventors’ performance; in particular, the high rate of compensation increases the quality of innovation. Furthermore, this paper extends its discussion to nonmonetary compensation types as well as monetary compensation. By examining the inventors’ various preferences for invention compensation, we find that the inventors of the private firms with greater preference for monetary compensation produce more patents, whereas those with greater preference for advantages in career produce more valuable patents. Second, inventors employed in public organizations with preferences for selfsatisfaction by technical proof are more likely to conduct research on more advanced and challenging te chnologies. This implies that employees’ invention compensation plan has room for further discussion on the types of non-monetary as well as monetary compensation.

This paper investigates the changing sources of growth in post-reform China. Using cross-province regressions, this paper finds that, in earlier periods, exports, foreign direct investment and marketization were significantly related to per capita income growth, whereas since the late 1990s, foreign direct investment and marketization have lost their significance and have been replaced by new sources of growth, such as innovation and knowledge, with only exports continuing to be important. This finding is robust after controlling for other variables representing other economic policies and provincial characteristics. We also tackle the possible endogeneity of innovation variables using the instrumental variables estimation method.

Protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) serves a dual role in economic development. While it promotes innovation by providing legal protection of inventions, it may retard catch-up and learning by restricting the diffusion of innovations. Does stronger IPR protection in a developing country encourage technology development in or technology transfer to that country? This book aims to address the issue, covering diverse forms of IPRs, diverse actors in innovation, and diverse cases from Asia and Latin America.

This chapter discusses the catch‐up experience of Korea, in which the present intellectual property legislation was established in 1961. Three stylized facts are noted about patenting trend: shift from petty (utility) patents to regular (invention) patents, shift from individual inventors to corporate inventors, and shift of share among patent applications from domestic applicants (when foreigners had little interest in Korean IPRs) to foreign applicants and, in the 1990s, again to domestic applicants. These shifts suggest that Korean firms had accumulated high‐tech capabilities and became sensitive to IPRs by the mid‐1980s. Korean firms, particularly in electronics, invested heavily in R&D to accumulate their own technologies and, having learnt the importance of IPR through a number of patent‐related legal disputes with American and Japanese firms, started to utilize their own IPRs to achieve competitive advantages.

Protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) serves a dual role in economic development. While it promotes innovation by providing legal protection of inventions, it may retard catch-up and learning by restricting the diffusion of innovations. Does stronger IPR protection in a developing country encourage technology development in or technology transfer to that country? This book aims to address the issue, covering diverse forms of IPRs, diverse actors in innovation, and diverse cases from Asia and Latin America.