Efectos de los derechos de propiedad intelectual en la competitividad de las empresas ecuatorianas luego del Acuerdo Multipartes entre Ecuador y la Unión Europea.

Abstract

The technological changes, globalization and the transition to the so-called "knowledge economy" are the main factors that have transformed global competition and changed the way of competing between companies and countries. Therefore, to guarantee survival and prosperity in this 21st century, we must look for different alternatives to keep afloat. Trade agreements are one of the alternatives that countries adopt because they provide us with a commercial, legal and economic structure to attract investment, technology and innovation; promote employability, promote sustainable development, integrate markets and be a channel to improve competitive advantages. That said, Ecuador negotiated a Multiparty Trade Agreement with the European Union. The objective of this research work covered a subchapter of this Agreement, called Intellectual Property; therefore, it was studied if there is an incidence of intellectual property rights conditioned to innovation in the competitiveness of the Ecuadorian business sector against the European business sector. A mixed approach was used to analyze patterns of behavior of the DPI registries published during the period 2015 to 2018 by the SENADI / IEPI (QUAN) and to show how and why, through interviews with experts, there are more foreign applications filed than Ecuadorian ones (QUAL). The collection and analysis were concurrent (DISTRAC), the quantitative results showed that there is more patenting of foreign PCT inventions than Ecuadorian ones, unlike the other requests of industrial IPRs and copyrights; the qualitative results showed that there are different inefficiencies in the Ecuadorian system that do not allow us to develop these activities effectively, despite the fact that we have modernized the institutional systems and have a treaty that promotes competitiveness. Thus, it is argued that although the theory explains that if there is an incidence of IPR conditional on innovation in competitiveness, in the Ecuadorian reality, the Ecuadorian business sector is not truly competitive with the European business sector. Finally, it is concluded that the Agreement is not being used correctly and that if these internal problems continue we will have more foreign patent applications than Ecuadorian ones.