The Impact Of Intellectual Property Regime On Urban Competitiveness

Knowledge is regarded as the momentum of economic growth in knowledge-based economy era. Meanwhile, cities are also counted as the engine of economic growth because of their role of centralizing resources and center of politics, economy and culture. Intellectual property regime is effective policy arrangement for knowledge commodities. So, through the link of knowledge and economic growth, we focus on the effects of intellectual property on urban competitiveness.In study of urban competitiveness, intellectual property (mainly limited to patents) is generally discussed with R&D activities as a part of science and technology or innovation activities. Factors related to intellectual property are classified into different indexes. In the evaluation of intellectual property protection, the quantity of patents is used to stand for intellectual property protection, or the subjective score of intellectual property protection is acquired from professionals through surveys. The inner mechanism of intellectual property regime impacting urban competitiveness didn't be explored. On the other hand, in intellectual property research field, as far as this subject is concerned, the theory of urban competitiveness and intellcutal property are not integrated well.This paper comprehensively explores the inner mechanism how intellectual property regime impacts urban competitiveness from perspectives of intellectual property regime's functions of innovation incentive, resource allocation, regulating market competition and government adiministration.Innovation promotes economy development of cities. The sustainable economy growth of cities is an important characteristic of urban competitiveness. Through innovation incentive by defining and protecting of property right, intellectual property regime acts on the raising of urban competitiveness.The urban competitiveness originates from the capability of attracting and utilizing resources. Intellectual property regime participates in allocation of resources (especially resources related to innovation activities) through defining, protecting and dealing intellectual property right. Consequently, the appropriate intellectual property regime can promote urban competitiveness.Stable and orderly market competition environment is the premise of economic activities in cities. It impacts convergence and allocation of resources and is the important condition to form favorable business environment in cities. So it influences cities' operation performance and sustainable development capability. Intellectual property regime regulates infringement and abuse on intellectual property right through its function of regulating market competition. So, it can impact the resources flowing among different cities and provide legal protection for favorable business environment, further influence urban competitiveness.The administration function of intellectual property regime indicates the government power reasonably involved into the field of civil activities. This is a part of government administration and influences cities' capability of value creation, resources convergence and allocation, marketing competition supervisal. Consequently, it can act on urban competitiveness.Based on relative studies and intellectual property development and protection practices in cities of PRC, an integrated and objective indexes system is constituted. It can be used to evaluate the operation performance of intellectual property policies in Chinese cities. The weight of every index is calculated by entropy model. Taking Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing as example, scores of intellectual property regime operation performance in sample cities are calculated, and then the correlation coefficient between intellectual property regime operation performance and urban competitiveness is analyzed. The conclusion of empirical study indicates that the operation performance of intellectual property regime has positive correlative relationship with urban competitiveness in sample cities. There is positive linear correlation between quantity of patents and value of GDP in sample cities.Accordding to problems found in the process of study, a series of suggestions on how to strengthen intellectual property development facilitating competitiveness of Chinese cities are brought forward taking Shanghai as central analysis example. In source of outlay for science and technologyactivities, the proportion of loans from financial institutios is samll, so suggestions on encouraging financial institution capical to participate in creating and appling intellectual property is put forward. Regarding low qualilty of patents, we give suggestions about how to optimize support policy to guide intellecutal property activieties reasonabley. Aiming at dispersive copyrights administration and the weakened funciton of the Patents Office in coping with civil disputes on patent right, we put up suggestions on how to improve intellectual property amdinistrative protection efficiency. About the disadvantage of Shanghai and other two cities on copyrights indexes compared with Beijing, and the important role of copyrights industry in the economical and social development of cities, we suggest urban authorites should encourage and protect copyrights creation activities facilitating copyrights industries. It is difficult to collecte data of indexes on intellectual property, upon that, we propose statistics and evaluation with respect to situation of intellectual property development and protection should be strengthened.Finally, research insufficiency and direction in the future are discussed.The new ideas in this paper are listed as following:1, this paper comprehensively explores the inner mechanism how intellectual property regime impacts urban competitiveness from perspectives of intrinsic function of intellectual property regime. Before this paper, researchers of urban competitiveness and intellectual property scholars study the effect of intellectual property on cities (regions or countries) competitiveness, respecectively. They didn't combine both of theories, therefore, the studies are generally limited to phenomenon discuss and involving little deep analysis in theory. This paper contributes to the link of both of theories.2, a scientific and objective evaluation indexes system is constituted which can be used to evaluate intellectual property regime operation performance in Chinese cities. This indexes system includes indexes representing intellectual property creation, application, administration and protection. It is tailored according to intellectual property development and protection practice in China. The evaluation method of entropy model makes the evaluation results more objective than the method of professional survey.3, the policy suggestions put forward in this paper base on facts and dates analysis, comparison of relative policies of different cities home and abroad. So they are of high pertinence and practicability for Shanghai and other Chinese cities.