The Impact of Patent Characteristics and Patent Strategic Value on Innovation Performance

To explore the impact of corporate patent characteristics and patent strategic value on innovation performance, this study provides an empirical analysis of 339 automobile companies in China. The results show that the patent characteristics have a positive impact on the patent strategic value and innovation performance, and the impact of patent characteristics on innovation performance depends on the patent strategic value. This study also shows that when the corporate leadership supports innovation and have strong patent management capability, the patent characteristics and patent strategic value will have a stronger effect on innovation performance. Introduction From the perspective of the resource-based theory, patents can bring competitive advantages to companies because they are valuable, scarce, and difficult to be imitated or replaced[1]. In particular, high-quality patents are conducive to the improvement of companies’ innovation performance. For instance, patents with high citations can help boost companies’ market value[2]. However, the positive impact of high-quality patents on corporate performance may lag behind, and it also varies according to different industries and firm sizes[3-5]: the number of citations of a company’s patents and the company’s market value show a significant U-shaped correlation[4]. The number of citations of patents for invention is significantly conducive to corporate performance, but the patents that have been sustaining for many years are not significantly conducive to corporate performance[5]. Patent characteristics refer to indicators that characterize the quality of patents, including offensive, defensive, and influence characteristics[6]. Innovation performance is the result at organizational level that measures a company’s innovation output. The correlation between patent characteristics and innovation performance might be complex. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct further research on the impact of relevant mediating variables or moderator variables, such as patent strategic value, innovation support from the leadership, and patent management capability. Among them, patent strategic value refers to the competitive advantages and commercial interests created by enterprises in the broader time (long-term) and space (industrial chain) dimensions through using patents as they are driven by strategic motives. This study explores the impact of patents on innovation performance from two aspects, namely, patent characteristics and patent strategic value, constructs a research model that innovation performance is affected by patent characteristics and patent strategic value, analyzes the moderating effects of two variables, i.e. innovation support from the leadership and patent management capability, on patent characteristics & innovation performance, and patent strategic value & innovation performance, and finally conducts an empirical analysis of the automobile industry. Literature Review and Research Hypotheses Patent Characteristics and Innovation Performance The patent offensive characteristics are shown as the scope of patent license, frequency and patent claim[6].The wider the scope of patent license, the more frequent the application, and the wider scope of patent claim, the more it can be applied and transferred[7].The defensive characteristics are International Conference on Advanced Education, Management and Humanities (AEMH 2019) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 352