The Impact of Intellectual Property Types on the Performance of Business Start-ups in the USA

Bernadette Power and Gavin Reid

Working Papers from Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge

Abstract: Using a large, longitudinal panel (2004-2011) of USA start-ups this paper shows the extent to which IP types (e.g. trademarks, patents, copyrights, outward licensing) enhance multidimensional performance. An ordered probit analysis (with random effects), corrected for sample selection bias, estimates performance to derive the following conclusions. First, trademarks and out-licensing IP types increase a firm’s chances of being a high performer, confirming the importance of certain forms of IP protection for start-ups. Second, patenting significantly reduces the chances of being a high performer, suggesting patenting has limited performance benefits for start-ups. Third, few performance synergies exist in the joint use of IP types, suggesting that strong complementarities among IP types are limited. While out-licensing patents and out-licensing copyrights certainly increase performance, out-licensing patents and out-licensing trademarks actually diminish it. Further, registering more trademarks and outlicensing more trademarks also diminishes performance, suggesting start-up firms should keep trademarks in-house.

Keywords: Performance; firm start-ups; intellectual property; out-licensing; complementarities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C55 D22 L25 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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