What is the situation of intellectual property rights in foreign direct investment?

International trade theories, whether Adam Smith's absolute superiority theory or David Ricardo's comparative superiority theory, have expounded the role of knowledge in international trade, but they have not included knowledge as a key variable in the international trade model. The rise of transnational corporations' foreign investment was mainly in the 2th century. After World War II, direct investment became the main way of international capital flow, so the theory of direct investment came into being relatively later than that of international trade. Harmo, an American scholar, first put forward the theory of monopoly advantage in his doctoral thesis "International Operation of Domestic Enterprises: A Study on Foreign Direct Investment" in 196. Harmo believes that the monopolistic advantages of American enterprises, such as technology and scale, are the decisive factors for American direct investment abroad. Kindleberger listed all kinds of monopoly advantages owned by multinational companies, mainly including product differences, trademarks, sales technology, price operation and other product market advantages; Advantages of production factors such as patents, industrial secrets and management skills; Internal and external economies of scale. In particular, he emphasized that patents and professional technology can make the products produced by enterprises different, so that they have the ability to control prices and sales. Patents can restrict the entry of competitors and maintain the monopoly position of the company. Johnson further elaborated on the unique advantages of knowledge as a multinational company. He believes that; The transfer of knowledge is the key to the process of direct investment. "In International Trade and Investment in 1974, Root analyzed the choice of intellectual assets between direct investment and license trading. He believes that the company's intellectual assets, such as patents, know-how, trademarks, etc., can be transferred by license, but the technological innovation ability and management are difficult to transfer. Vernon, a professor at Harvard University, founded the product life cycle theory, explaining the motivation, timing and location choice of American enterprises' post-war foreign direct investment. Vernon's product life cycle (that is, innovation-based oligopoly, mature oligopoly and aging oligopoly) is related to the life cycle of knowledge. The essence of Japanese scholar Kiyoshi Kojima's marginal industry investment theory is the advancement of knowledge contained in different industries in location investment. He thinks that labor and capital can be replaced by labor and management resources in the Heckschel-Olin model. Operating resources is a special element. That includes tangible capital, as well as intangible capital such as technology and skills. The internalization theory of Barclays, a scholar at the University of Reading, emphasizes the incompleteness of the market of intermediate products such as knowledge. Carson used the word information to collectively refer to knowledge products such as technology, management, skills, etc. In the transaction, knowledge products only transfer the right to use, but not the ownership, which leads to high transaction costs in the knowledge product market. Deng Ning's international production compromise theory also repeatedly emphasized the role of knowledge. According to the theory of international direct investment, their similarities in knowledge value are: (1) emphasizing the market structure of knowledge products and the important position of knowledge products in enterprise management. (2) The motivation to internalize the knowledge product market is the strongest, because the research and development of technology is time-consuming, risky and expensive. Knowledge products have the nature of "natural monopoly, and must be used through differential prices;" There are many uncertain factors in the consumption of knowledge products, and the enjoyment of knowledge products makes it possible for a third party outside the contract to obtain the externality of knowledge. Knowledge products have the risk of disclosure through transactions, which is also a transaction cost. "(3) The characteristic of knowledge assets is its high production cost. However, the marginal cost of using these assets through direct investment is very low, even equal to zero, because the enterprise has already paid the cost, the knowledge cost is sunk cost for the enterprise, and the supply of knowledge assets is flexible and can be used at the same time in different places, while local enterprises have to pay the full cost if they want to get these knowledge assets. (4) Knowledge has an innovative synergistic effect on the company's profit, and multinational companies always tend to make use of all their knowledge assets through direct investment. From the above theories of international direct investment, it can be seen that almost every scholar of multinational companies emphasizes the importance of knowledge in direct investment, and some even claim to be decisive. The problems are as follows: (1) Direct investment is influenced by the theory of economic growth, without realizing that knowledge can also be an element, and it has different characteristics from land, capital, labor and human capital. Adam Smith famously said that market division of labor is influenced by market scope. Declining income is an iron law in the era of industrial economy. Of course, the scope of the market determines the division of labor, because land, capital and labor are scarce. When multinational companies in industrial civilization explore the international market, the scale of investment has to be restricted by the changing law of traditional factors. Therefore, they have not put the theory of direct investment under the background of knowledge economy, and have not explained the nature of knowledge and why it is of great significance to direct investment. (2) When the theory of direct investment pays attention to the role of knowledge, it ignores the significance of system to direct investment, especially the role of intellectual property system to direct investment. The theory of direct investment takes institution as an established assumption. This assumption is implicit in the theory of direct investment. However, in the actual market structure, the emergence, maintenance and change of the system have costs, and its initial cost is quite large. As an asset, knowledge will become what Coase called "the tragedy of the commons" if it is not constrained by the system. (3) In addition to tangible capital and labor input, direct investment will become impossible without the combination of intangible capital. Intangible capital is uncertain and risky, and its transactions are based on contracts, which are written and unwritten, some need to be confirmed by the national will in the form of law, and some need to be recognized by public habits and practices. Intangible capital in direct investment is cross-border investment, which raises a problem. Without the regulation of intellectual property system, intangible assets in direct investment will not overflow if the concept, means and degree of protecting intangible assets are not consistent in private laws and cultural customs of various countries.