摘要：This paper re-visits the empirical failure to establish
a clear link between R&D efforts and patent
counts at the industry level. It is claimed that the
“propensity-to-patent” concept should be split into
an “appropriability propensity” and a “strategic
propensity”. The empirical contribution is based on
a unique panel dataset composed of 18 industries in
19 countries over 19 years. The results confirm that
the R&D-patent relationship is affected by research
productivity, appropriability propensity and strategic-
propensity factors. The observed increase in the
propensity to file patents is much stronger for supra-
national (that is, triadic or regional) patents than for
national priority filings, suggesting that the current
patent hype is essentially the result of a globalization
phenomenon.
