연구개발 투자 및 국내외 지적재산권 취득이 한국 기업의 대외경쟁력에 미치는 영향

The Effects of R&D Investments and Acquisitions of Domestic and Overseas Intellectual Property Rights by Korean Firms on their Global Competitiveness

This paper studies the effects of R&D investments and subsequent acquisition activities of intellectual property rights such as patent rights by Korean firms globally and domestically in order to expand their global market. Using data from 2,074 Korean firms over the period between 2005 and 2014, and applying fixed effects panel regression models, we find that there is a positive effect of R&D investments on global competitiveness, measured by performance of corporate exports during the year and the following year. Moreover, the number of applications for domestic intellectual property rights has a positive relationship with global competitiveness just as in the case of R&D investments whereas that for overseas intellectual property rights applications shows a negative relationship during the same period. Surprisingly, such negative effects persist for some years both after the firms apply for intellectual property rights overseas and after they actually obtain intellectual property rights now both domestically and overseas. The positive roles of R&D investments and the number of applications for domestic intellectual property rights on their global competitiveness are mostly consistent with prior studies like Himmelberg and Peterson (1994) and Lee Jae-Deuk (2009), while aftermaths of such corporate activities for overseas intellectual property rights and acquisitions of intellectual property rights for some years after are not reported elsewhere and need further study.