Intellectual Property Protection, Imitation Of Threats And Exports Of High-tech Products

In recent years, with the development of the world economy and trade, high-tech industry is becoming more and more important in international trade. However, in high-tech trade, the imitation threat of the importers affects the exporting decisions of the exporters. The protection of intellectual property rights is a powerful weapon against imitation and therefore affects high-tech exporters’ behavior.This paper, by using empirical means to observe Japan’s high-tech exports in2005, tries to find out the relationship between intellectual property protection, imitation threat and high-tech exports.This empirical study found out that, overall, the gravity model could explain the high-tech export flows of Japan. Following Maskus and Penubarti’s(1995) model setup, empirical results indicate that market expansion effect do exist in Japan’s three high-tech industries, while market monopoly effect is only observed in the pharmaceutical industry but the other two industries. Following Smith’s(1999) model setup, empirical results indicate that market monopoly effect is observed in two high-tech industries while market expansion effect could not be observed.The empirical findings in this paper could shed some light on China’s high-tech imports:Currently, China is a large imitating threat to high-tech exporting countries. Some high-tech exporters have already cut high-tech exports to China. An effective solution for China is to search for alternative suppliers of high-tech products worldwide who are less sensitive to IPRs.