Harmonisation and globalisation of intellectual property culture

This paper explores the relationship between the two sides of intellectual property culture in an international context, namely the harmonisation of its protection and the globalisation of its creation. To this end, we explore the role of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the recent surge in the internationalisation of patents that originates from the newly emerging economies. The aim is to capture the outreach of the Northern intellectual property culture to the South and the South–North globalisation of the resulting intellectual property that emerges in the South. Global bilateral patent data are used to investigate the location specificity of IPR enforcement for the emergence of this phenomenon. We find that the harmonisation of IPR protection encourages foreign‐patenting activities of Southern innovators. Our findings suggest that a global convergence of IPR protection can stimulate the production and the internationalisation of intellectual property in the South. As the North and the South grow closer in terms of levels of development, a harmonised institutional structure becomes more adequate as they increasingly share similar markets.