By allowing for investment activities by research and development (R&D) firms to prevent product obsolescence, we show that if legal patent protection is too strong, a higher R&D subsidy rate delivers insufficient investments for survival in the R&D sector, depressing innovation and growth in...

This paper shows in an endogenous growth model without scale effects that the relationship between intellectual property protection and innovation can be inverted-U-shaped. The inverted-U relationship emerges from an interaction between learning-driven and R&D-driven technological advances.