The current increasing volatility in international politics makes it more important to understand how multinational enterprises respond to political tension between host and home countries. This paper explains the impact of macro-level bilateral political tension on micro-level strategy of multinationals in the host country. We developed the idea that patenting may be used to signal a firm’s commitment and contribution to the host country’s economy and development. Data on 437 large multinationals and interviews with senior managers of 20 foreign subsidiaries in China show that patenting local innovation does indeed help an investing firm signal its usefulness to the host country government. It can thus serve as a response to bilateral political tension. The relationship between political tension and local patenting also depends on the relative trade dependence of the home and host countries and on the investing firm’s technology level and its stake in China. The greater the dependence of an MNE and its home country government on the host country, the more likely patenting of local innovations would increase in times of bilateral political tension.

近年来，专利申请和专利诉讼均呈现快速增长态势，有必要厘清二者的相互作用关系。首先采用协整分析和误差修正模型，分析专利申请和专利诉讼的时间序列数据，研究表明专利申请与专利诉讼存在长期稳定的动态均衡关系；在此基础上，运用格兰杰因果检验的分析表明，专利申请与专利诉讼存在显著的相互促进作用；其中，专利申请对专利诉讼有显著的促进作用，这说明专利申请的增加将导致专利诉讼在未来的涌现；与此同时，专利诉讼对专利申请也有显著的促进作用，这意味着专利诉讼的增加将促使专利权人提出更多的专利申请。

Both patent applications and patent lawsuits have increased rapidly in recent years. It is necessary to clarify the interaction between them. Co-integration and error correction model are employed to analyze the time series of patent applications and patent lawsuits. It shows that there is a long-term dynamic equilibrium relationship between patent applications and patent lawsuits. The results of Granger causality show that patent applications and patent lawsuits present a significant interaction of mutual promotion. Patent applications have a positive effect on patent lawsuits, indicating that the increase in patent applications will lead to the emergence of massive patent lawsuits in the future. Meanwhile, patent lawsuits also present a positive effect on patent applications, which means that the increase in patent lawsuits will inspire patentees to apply for more patents.

企业专利诉讼与创新间关系是创新管理领域的重要研究议题，然而现有文献重内部影响、轻外部环境，且存在研究观点相左的现象，因此，专利诉讼对企业创新的影响亟待深入研究。从动态竞争视角，基于“察觉—动机—能力”框架，采用模糊集定性比较分析方法，探究诉讼类型、诉讼强度、市场共性、资源基础和攻防能力5个因素引发被诉企业高/低创新强度的组态效应。研究发现，经历专利诉讼后，被诉企业高创新强度行为是多因素共同作用的结果，可将其划分为基于市场保护、基于资源重配以及出于风险规避的诉讼激励型企业；被诉企业低创新强度行为主要归因于资源基础和攻防能力缺失以及高强度的专利诉讼，可将其界定为基于资源与能力断裂的诉讼被动型企业。研究结论对厘清竞争互动视域下企业创新决策影响因素，弥合现有研究分歧，指导企业从诉讼中强化攻防能力，促进创新跃迁具有重要价值。

This review reorganizes and reconceptualizes extant research on patent strategy, which has emerged from diverse roots in economics, law, and management. Accordingly, it is anticipated that this review will help provide structure and direction to what is currently a somewhat disparate and fractured field of study within management. The main proposed framework highlights two important themes within patent strategy research—generic patent strategies and the strategic management of patents. In addition, it is noted that research in each of these themes generally maps onto one or more of three key domains—rights, licensing, or enforcement—within which patent-related strategic actions are typically undertaken. Two summary tables of prior research are provided that juxtapose the three patent strategy domains with different theory lenses adopted in patent strategy research. Finally, the article highlights two promising areas whose connections with patent strategy are beginning to be addressed by research—firms’ overall appropriability strategies and value creation strategies. An overarching conceptual figure maps the different research areas reviewed in the article and highlights the relationships between these research literatures. The reconceptualization and reframing of prior research advanced in this review promises to advance scholarship on patent strategy by illuminating its many links with the broader management field and by identifying opportunities to address important unanswered research questions. It thus provides a useful roadmap to help stimulate and guide future management research in this vital area.

We characterize the knowledge production process whereby the inventive capabilities of the firm generate innovation output in highly inventive multinational enterprises (MNEs). We explore the sensitivity of this relationship to the strength of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection across the MNEs R&D subsidiaries. We argue that MNE innovative performance will be enhanced when the firm’s R&D activities are based in locations where IPR protection is stronger. Moreover, when considering the internal geography of the MNEs R&D activities, innovation performance depends on the distance between the home- and host-country IPR regime. Thus, innovation performance is worse, as the difference between home and host IPR regimes increases. Finally, we explore asymmetries in this relationship, in particular that the deterioration is more marked when MNEs locate their R&D activities in host economies with IPR protection significantly less strict than in their home country. We test these ideas using a unique new dataset about the most innovative MNEs in the world, an unbalanced panel of around 900 MNEs observed for the period 2004 to 2013 and find strong support for all our hypotheses.

In this study, we examine the nature of Schumpeterian competition between entrants and incumbents. We argue that incumbents may respond to the threat of entry by either attacking the entrant or trying to learn from it, and that entrants, in turn, may react by either reciprocating the incumbent's advances or retreating from it. Putting these competitive choices together, we develop a framework of four distinct potential scenarios of Schumpeterian competition. In particular, we emphasize a scenario we term creative divergence, wherein incumbents try to learn from entrants and build on their technologies, but their investments to do so cause entrants to retreat, resulting in diminishing returns to learning investments by incumbents. Exploratory analyses of the U.S. cardiovascular medical device industry find patterns consistent with the creative divergence scenario, with incumbent knowledge investments helping them to learn from entrants, but these learning benefits being undermined as entrants move away from incumbents.

知识产权司法保护赋予专利权人以“牙齿”，其是否能够促进中国企业进行自主创新，直接关系到中国企业的创新战略转型。本文以2017年中国专利调查数据为依据，考察了专利诉讼对于企业自主创新战略的影响。实证分析表明，专利诉讼经历能够有效激励涉诉企业进行自主创新，这一结论在采用倾向得分匹配法和加粗精确匹配法，以及采用工具变量法和条件混合过程方法后仍然稳健。这表明知识产权司法保护有利于促进企业自主创新。异质性分析表明，知识产权司法保护对于企业自主创新的促进作用在小微企业、专利依赖型产业的企业以及内资企业中更为显著。

After more than four decades of rapid development, Chinese firms have reached the threshold of transformation from imitation to innovation, from technological follower to parallel walker and leader. However, this transformation requires plenty of conditions especially the support of high standards and high-strength intellectual property protection. The higher the intensity of intellectual property protection, the more distinct the property rights boundary of firms' innovation achievements, and the more inclined firms are to win market competition through innovation. Among varieties of ways of intellectual property protection, judicial protection plays a leading role and determines the intensity of intellectual property protection to a large extent. As an important way of intellectual property judicial protection, whether patent litigation can promote Chinese firms’ indigenous innovation is directly related to the transformation of firms’ innovation strategy. Based on the 2017 patent survey data of Chinese firms, this paper examines the impact of patent litigation on firms' indigenous innovation strategies. We find that the experience in patent litigation can effectively stimulate indigenous innovation for the firms involved. This finding is robust in adopting propensity score matching method and coarsened exact matching method, as well as using instrumental variable method and conditional mixed process method. This indicates that judicial protection of intellectual property rights is conducive to promoting firms’ indigenous innovation. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect of judicial protection of intellectual property rights on firm’s innovation is more significant for small and micro firms and firms in patent-dependent industries as well as domestic firms.This paper contributes to the literature from the two perspectives. Firstly, different from the existing research focusing on the impact of patent litigation on the R&D investment, patent application and management of the firms involved, this study explores the effect of patent litigation on firms' indigenous innovation strategies, which enriches the literature on the innovation effect of patent litigation. Secondly, compared with existing literature examining the influence of firms' own characteristics and market environment on firms' indigenous innovation，this paper focuses on the role of judicial protection of intellectual property rights, extending the research on the influencing factors of indigenous innovation.This paper has the following implications for intellectual property policy in China. Firstly, we need to improve the judicial protection system of intellectual property rights to stimulate firms' indigenous innovation. Specifically, to carry out the judicial adjudication mode of "integration of three trials", speed up the development of intellectual property judge team and ensure the fairness and efficiency of patent judicial adjudication. Secondly, the patent judicial protection system needs to pay appropriate attention to special firm groups. Since small and micro firms are weak in litigation ability, it is suggested to improve the convenience and friendliness of the judicial system for these firms. Firms in patent-dependent industries are prone to get caught in the "patent thicket" and patent disputes. Therefore, it is proposed to improve the professional level of judges and increase the efficiency of trials, especially in "patent thicket" related trials. Considering the disadvantages of domestic firms in litigation resources, we suggest that the judicial system help them reduce litigation costs effectively.

Entrants are often viewed as suffering from a “liability of newness”—at founding, they rarely possess the knowledge and capabilities necessary to compete and survive. They can overcome this liability by learning vicariously from the knowledge of incumbent firms. But how can entrants learn from external knowledge when they lack the prior related knowledge that forms the basis of absorptive capacity? We theorize that the process of internal experiential learning facilitates learning from external knowledge, particularly for entrants. To test this theory, we examine learning using a comprehensive set of U.S. commercial banking firms, including a full census of entrants. Our estimates suggest that the share of vicarious learning realized in the process of experiential learning is twice as large for entrants as for incumbents. In this sense, entrants enjoy an “advantage of newness” in learning.