Cross-laminated timber panel buildings are gaining a growing interest of the scientific community due to significant technical advantages, such as the material sustainability, the high fire resistance and quickness of erection. Nevertheless, it is well known that timber panels themselves are not able to dissipate a significant amount of energy during an earthquake. In fact, in this system the seismic design is carried out in order to dissipate the energy by means of inelasticity of connections. Generally, the elements devoted to withstand plastic deformations are the panel-panel and panel-foundation joints and, therefore, their ability to sustain repeated excursion in plastic range governs the building inelastic response. The paper here presented aims to propose an advanced approach for designing cross laminated timber panel buildings. In particular, it is proposed to substitute the classical hold-downs, which usually exhibit a limited dissipation capacity, with an innovative type of dissipative angle bracket. The new connections, called dissipative L-stub, apply the concept usually adopted for designing the hysteretic metallic dampers ADAS (Added Damping and Stiffness). In particular, their tapered shape allows a better spread of lasticization resulting in a high dissipation capacity. Within this framework, in order to characterize the force-displacement response under cyclic loads of L-stubs an experimental campaign is carried out. Afterwards, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is proved by analysing the non-linear response under seismic loads of a three-storey building alternatively equipped with hold-downs or L-stub. Finally, the response of classical and innovative system is compared in terms of behaviour factor.