Open innovation and patenting activity in health care

Purpose–The study aims to explore the interplay between open innovation and intellectual property.Differently from previous studies, we argue that open innovation fosters firm’s patenting activity.Design/methodology/approach–We use linear regression analysis to test model’s hypotheses. Data aredrawn from the Eurostat statistics and refer to a large sample of European firms (NACE Rev.2).Findings–The findings confirm that open innovation fosters patenting activity in health care, also thanks tohuge governments’expenditures in this market.Research limitations/implications–The study focuses solely on European firms and it adopts atraditional linear approach. So, we cannot exclude that different dynamics may occur across European borders.Future research should address this concern by focusing on multi-country comparative studies.Practicalimplications–Open innovation is the most suitable model for health industry, because it improvesboth innovation performance and intellectual capital of firms.Originality/value–The study tackles an existing gap of the literature by considering how the presence oflarge customers impacts the strength of intellectual property protection