Research on the Quality of Agricultural Patents Under the Perspective of Rural Revitalization

Abstract

The development of agricultural science and technology intellectual property rights can promote the implementation of rural revitalization strategy. Combining the agricultural patent data from 1985 to 2013 and using the survival time as a proxy of the patent quality, this paper utilizes the Cox proportional hazard model to explore the quality of agricultural patents from the aspects of overall trend, policy role and main innovators. The results show that, first, the number of agricultural patent applications and grants have increased significantly, and the overall quality has improved over time. Second, policies related to agricultural intellectual property have positively promoted the quality of agricultural patents. Third, there are large differences among various innovators in the quality of patents. The quality of corporate patents is the highest, followed by research institution’s, while patents of university face a high probability of “death” risk. Fourth, the quality of foreign patents is much higher than domestic ones, and the quality of patents in domestic developed regions is higher than that in the development and less-developed areas. The research results are of great significance for improving the quality of agricultural patents, realizing the strategic goal of rural revitalization, and upgrading the agricultural industry.