Intellectual property rights, complementarity and the firm's economic performance

This paper analyses the optimal use of formal intellectual property rights (IPR) at the firm level. We examine the impact of combinations of IPR on the firm's productivity in order to study the complementarity or substitution relationship between them. Our data are extracted from two sets of community innovation survey (CIS): CIS IV and CIS 2006. We investigate complementarity (substitution) at two levels: in the context of formal IPR strategies and when they are combined with other intangible and managerial assets based on both adoption and productivity approaches. Mixed results are found for the complementarity of IPR alone. However, in combination with other activities, there is high complementarity with innovative and innovation cooperation variables. These results suggest that IPR strategies should be combined with other complementarity assets for the optimal appropriation of innovation profits.