Using a large, longitudinal panel of US start-ups collected between 2004 and 2011, this article shows the extent to which intellectual property (IP) types, for example trademarks, patents, copyrights and outward licensing, enhance multidimensional performance. An ordered probit analysis 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 increase performance, out-licensing patents and out-licensing trademarks diminish it. Furthermore, registering more trademarks and out-licensing more trademarks also diminishes performance, suggesting start-up firms should keep trademarks in-house.

本文使用从2004年到2011年收集的大型美国初创企业纵向面板，显示了知识产权（IP）类型（例如商标，专利，版权和对外许可）在多大程度上提高了多维性能。对样本选择偏差进行校正的有序概率分析，估计性能以得出以下结论。首先，商标和外发许可的知识产权类型增加了公司成为高绩效企业的机会，这证实了某些形式的知识产权保护对于初创企业的重要性。其次，专利申请大大降低了成为高绩效人才的机会，这表明专利申请对初创企业的绩效收益有限。第三，在IP类型的联合使用中几乎没有性能协同作用，这表明IP类型之间的强互补性是有限的。向外许可的专利和向外许可的版权可以提高性能，而向外许可的专利和向外许可的商标则会降低性能。此外，注册更多的商标并向更多的商标外发许可也会降低性能，这表明初创公司应将商标保留在内部。