Venture Capital and Patent Activities in China: Multi-Case Study in Bio-Pharmaceutical Industry

Patents signal a start-up's technological and innovative capability. Venture Capital (VC) investors can evaluate the true potential and behavior of start-ups through their patents. While, VC would have effect in enterprises' innovation output. The detailed interaction between VC and patent activities in China is different and attractive. This paper tries to explore this relationship in two levels, describing the overall investment of China as descriptive analysis and multi-case study as exploratory analysis. We first got a full-view perspective of VC investments amount and industry distribution in China. Then we looked into 57 companies in bio-pharmaceutical industry and divided them into four groups, already in a good track when getting VCs, holding patents when the companies are founded, getting innovation (patents) by mergers and acquisitions, and don't care patents much. By analyzing the interaction between VC and patent activities of four typical companies, we got four characteristics, which could be referenced by both companies and investors in making decisions.