公司治理與專利權：臺灣新興市場

Corporate Governance and Patent: Evidence from Emerging Taiwan Market

東亞地區的公司代理問題為控制股東剝削小股東，因而傳統的公司治理機制（如董事會與接收）無法緩和此一現象。本研究以台灣上市股票公司為研究對象，探討控制股東的股權結構、董事會組成和公司創新活動之間的關係。本文以專利權數量為創新活動的替代變數，並以控制股東的控制權與現金流量權偏離程度，作為控制股東剝削小股東的替代變數。研究結果發現：(1)控制股東的控制權偏離現金流權程度愈大，公司進行創新的活動愈少，顯示控制股東存在負項的誘因效果；(2)控制股東涉入公司經營管理對公司創新的影響，會隨著控制股東控制權偏離現金流權程度的增加，而出現愈來愈大的負面效果。最後，本文改採推估的專利權「價值」變數以取代專利權「數量」變數時，所得結果仍然支持假說。此一分析結果，在「新發明」專利權下，尤其明顯。

The agency problem of listed companies in East Asia is closely related to their typical concentrated ownership structures. Tight control creates an entrenchment problem that allows controlling owners’ self-interested behaviors to go unchallenged internally by the boards of directors or externally by takeover markets. The primary objective of this paper is to explore the association between ownership structure, measured by the divergence between the ultimate owner’s control and the equity ownership level \director of board\ and innovation. Following the prior studies (Francis and Smith, 1995), this paper use patents granted in Intellectual Property Office of Taiwan as a proxy for innovation activities. We find that innovation is significantly and negatively related to the level of the agency problem; Secondly, we also find that the adverse effects of controlling owner acting as chair of the board or CEO, or as director (independent supervisors) on innovation increase in the divergence between the ultimate owner’s control and the equity ownership level. Our findings appear to be robust with respect to the alternative of including the estimated value of patents as opposed to the number of patents as the explanatory variable. The documented association is more pronounced for ‘‘Invention patents ’’ patents relative to all patents.