Overseas Intellectual Property Disputes and Chinese Firms' Overseas Patent Applications

As intellectual property (IP) conflicts have become an increasingly integral component of international economic competition,Chinese enterprises have been confronted with a growing number of overseas IP disputes in the process of “going global”. Meanwhile,as China deepens its integration into the global innovation network,overseas patenting has drawn widespread attention as a critical channel for enhancing both national and firm-level IP strategic capabilities. Overseas patent applications not only help firms protect technological innovations and safeguard their interests in international markets,but also constitute an important foundation for improving China's position in global value chains and in international innovation competition. Despite the increasing relevance of this issue,existing studies have paid limited attention to the relationship between overseas IP disputes and Chinese firms' overseas patenting behavior,and systematic micro-level empirical evidence remains scarce. Against this backdrop,this paper incorporates overseas IP disputes and firms' overseas patent applications into a unified analytical framework and conducts an integrated investigation from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The contributions of this paper are threefold. First,by viewing overseas IP disputes as an external shock,this study extends the literature on firms' strategic overseas patenting behavior. Second,drawing on micro-level enterprise survey data,it provides empirical evidence on the impact of overseas IP disputes on firm behavior. Third,through multidimensional heterogeneity analyses,it uncovers how these effects vary across firms with different characteristics and external institutional environments. The theoretical analysis indicates that overseas intellectual property disputes promote firms' overseas patent applications mainly through two channels:by intensifying competitive pressure in international markets,which induces firms to strategically strengthen patenting efforts in order to enhance core competitiveness and build patent barriers,and by heightening firms' awareness of intellectual property protection,thereby shifting their behavior from passive defense to proactive overseas patent strategies aimed at deterring imitation and infringement and strengthening their competitive position in global markets. In addition,the mechanism analysis shows that,in response to increased legal risks and the need to safeguard technological innovation,firms tend to raise R&D investment,which further reinforces their incentives to apply for patents abroad. The empirical results show that experiencing overseas intellectual property disputes significantly enhances Chinese firms' strategic orientation toward overseas patenting and promotes their willingness to apply for patents abroad. To address potential endogeneity concerns,this study employs propensity score matching to improve sample comparability and reduce selection bias,and further uses the proportion of overseas IP disputes among other firms in the same industry and the number of foreign direct investment contract projects at the city level in 2015 as instrumental variables to mitigate omitted variable bias and reverse causality. A series of robustness checks—including additional control variables,alternative Probit and OLS specifications,and different fixed-effects settings—consistently support the robustness of the main findings. The mechanism tests further verify that increased R&D investment constitutes an important channel through which overseas intellectual property disputes promote firms' overseas patent applications. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that the positive effects are more pronounced among firms with export activities,firms in the mature stage of development,firms located in cities with higher levels of intellectual property governance,and firms situated in cities designated as nodes under the Belt and Road Initiative. Based on the theoretical analysis and empirical findings,this paper derives several implications at both the firm and policy levels. At the firm level,enterprises should strengthen their strategic orientation toward overseas patenting and respond to overseas intellectual property disputes in a rational and flexible manner by making effective use of diversified dispute resolution mechanisms. At the policy level,governments should further improve early-warning and response mechanisms for overseas intellectual property risks,and adopt differentiated approaches across firms and regions to help transform the external pressure arising from overseas intellectual property disputes into an internal driving force for enhancing firms' overseas intellectual property capabilities.