Venture capital investment decision and the intellectual capital of portfolio companies: Evidence from biothechnology in China

Abstract

Consulta en la Biblioteca ETSI Industriales (Riunet)

[EN] One of the main concerns for venture capital (VC) investments in China is the low intellectual property rights (IPR) protection as a result of a high level of infringements and weak patent policies. In the last years there has been an important evolution in the patent activity of high-technology firms. Biotechnology companies are now signaling venture capitalists by using patents as an evidence of their technology output in order to reduce the information asymmetry between each other. Our research reviews the role of patents in previous studies when considering how they influence the portfolio company financing performance by observing different measures. We contribute to the literature on this topic by studying this subject in a low IPR setting and by bringing up the question of how the different kind of patent documents have an independent value as they are available in different periods of the investment.