This study examines the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) investment across two categories of patent families: simple patent families (SPF patents with shared, identical priority documents) and extended patent families (EPF patent applications associated with the priority claims of other patent applications, without restriction). This research additionally examines whether collaborative R&D moderates this relationship. This analysis uses a panel dataset of 1,460 A-share-listed Chinese firms covering the years 2010–2019. The results indicate a stronger correlation between AI investment and EPFs than between AI investment and SPFs. This finding suggests that AI investment is associated with patent family filings, which, in turn, may be consistent with greater invention-level activity at the national level. Consequently, corporate–corporate innovation (CCI) and corporate–university innovation (CUI) appear to be positively associated with AI and patent family filings, whereas corporate–research institution innovation (CRI) appears to diminish patent family filings. This difference may reflect variations in goal alignment, coordination effectiveness, and absorptive capacity across collaboration models, which are associated with differences in firms’ ability to convert AI capabilities into scalable, protected innovation outcomes.
Bunje et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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