Impact of patent rights on innovation: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Research shows that the enforcement of patent rights (PRs) play a significant role in countries' innovation and technological development. The existing narrative reviews find that the impact of PRs on innovation is not clear across countries. Therefore, this study examines the impact of patent rights protection on innovation across countries by conducting a meta-analysis from 14 empirical studies that contain 145 estimates, undertaken during 1996–2019. This study intends to test whether the findings are sensitive to various measures employed and identify possible policy implications across countries. Our analysis suggests that certain aspects of measuring innovation are crucial in explaining the significance of these findings. This study finds that countries' strength in PRs plays a significant role in determining its innovation. We also find that there is a distinction in PRs' contribution to domestic innovation across developed and developing countries in the existing primary studies. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.