Patents and the Measurement of International Competitiveness: New Data on the Use of Patents by Universities, Small Firms and Individual Inventors

This highly original book represents a major advance in the use of patents to compare countries’ technological competitiveness. It tabulates and analyzes 280,000 United States patents from countries across the world over a ten year period. Specifically, these patents were granted to ‘not-for-profit’ entities (mainly universities and research institutes), firms with no more than 500 employees, or to individual inventors. For each of these groups, the book provides statistics and discussion on how long patents are kept in force, the extent to which they are cited, and how far inventions made in different countries are in fact owned in the United States.

Inter-country comparisons are provided between groupings of large and small advanced countries and between the sizeable number of countries for which patents are only just beginning to become economically important. The fact that all these patents have been subjected to the same examination process facilitates genuine like-for-like comparisons. Some of the more interesting emergent international differences in inventions are also explored. This book will provide a mine of reliable data for econometric studies of international competitiveness.

Believed to be the first ever measurement of the patentable output of universities and research institutes worldwide because it provides the first fully international comparisons, this book will be invaluable to: patent offices and attorneys, university technical transfer offices, national industrial development agencies, as well as economists with an interest in international trade and technology