Overview: How can multinational enterprises (MNEs) protect their intellectual property (IP) when patents are weakly enforced? An imitator will only take action to appropriate an innovator’s value if the imitator has the financial motivation, opportunity, and ability to copy and commercialize the innovator’s product/service. If the innovator can decrease one of these conditions to a level that demotivates or inhibits the imitator from taking action, the innovator will have protected its IP. In this article, we introduce the constructs of barrier to imitation and barrier to commercialization, two separate hurdles that can block imitators from appropriating MNE rents. We prescribe MNE IP strategies contingent on country characteristics, local imitator capabilities, an MNE’s barriers to imitation and commercialization, and the value chain activities the MNE desires to locate in the country of interest.

概述：当专利执行不力时，跨国企业 (MNE) 如何保护其知识产权 (IP)？只有当模仿者有经济动机、机会和能力复制创新者的产品/服务并将其商业化时，模仿者才会采取行动来挪用创新者的价值。如果创新者可以将这些条件之一降低到削弱或抑制模仿者采取行动的水平，则创新者将保护其知识产权。在本文中，我们介绍了模仿障碍和商业化障碍的结构，这两个独立的障碍可以阻止模仿者挪用跨国公司的租金。我们根据国家特点、当地模仿者的能力、跨国公司模仿和商业化的障碍来制定跨国公司的知识产权战略，