Patent Counts Research Articles

Exploring the dynamics of water innovation

1. Call for papers for a special volume of the Journal ofCleaner ProductionAccess towater is a human right and essential for meeting basichuman needs. Furthermore, water is indispensible for agriculture,healthy ecosystems and all industrial processes and, therefore, foreconomic development. Yet the water sector, particularly in devel-oping countries, is facing enormous challenges due to climatechange, rapid population growth, rising demand for water,increasing pollution of sources leading toever more insecure waterresources (ADB, 2013; UNESCO, 2012, 2014; Deloitte, 2012). Toaddressthese challenges, innovation is crucial. This Special Volume(SV) is based on the realization that these are substantive reasonsfor examining, in detail, how water-related innovations are gener-ated, diffused and applied and, based on an improved understand-ing, how these processes can be fostered by overcoming obstaclesand bottlenecks to water innovation.The importance of water-related innovations has been realizedby policy makers in recent years and is evident by its increasing in-clusion in policy and research agendas and international fora, e.g.the water-related challenges addressed in the Horizon2020 pro-gramme, the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of the Stra-tegic Forum for International Science and Technology Cooperationof the European Commission and Member States, the EuropeanInnovation Platform on Water (EIP Water), the Joint ProgrammingInitiativeofEUMemberstatesonWater(JPIWater),theWatersup-ply and sanitation Technology Platform (WssTP) and the inclusionof the science, technology and innovation theme for the upcoming7th World Water Forum in 2015. The discussion on how to fosterinnovation, however, is still characterized by an absence of robustdata analysis across Europe. Still, Europe is acclaimed to be a leaderinwater-related knowledge, technologyand innovation but in gen-eral, the water ‘sector’ has the image of being less dynamic andinnovative than other sectors. According to Ipektsidis et al. (2014)aggregated figures of innovation and RD 2)over 70% of innovation worldwide happens in countries with lowor moderate vulnerability towards water scarcity, implying that(with the exception of Australia, Spain and Israel), countries withsevere water issues do not appear to specialize in water-relatedtechnologies; and 3) some countries with large water resources,such as Switzerland or Norway, nevertheless appear as significantmarkets for water-efficiency technologies.A previous study on water pollution abatement and controltechnologies identified (including wastewater treatment tech-niques e primary (mechanical), secondary (biological) and tertiary(chemical) treatment technologies) showed that Germany and theUS have historically been the major innovators, with Japan takingthe lead more recently. Moreover, it noted that the rate of growthof this type of innovation in Korea and especially in China hadincreased, four-fold during the period 1999-2004, in contrastwith the developments elsewhere, with patent counts for most ofthe large innovating countries actually decreased (OECD, 2011).We argue that these aggregated statistics may not be capturingthe actual dynamics of water innovation. To begin with, non-RD p.275). Moreover, the EuropeanInnovation Platform on Water has identified a number of barriersand obstacles that are perceived to hamper water-related innova-tions and has prioritized them into the following categories: a lackof funding and financial flows for innovation into the sector (as isthe case for many other sectors), b. risk aversion, c. lack of demon-

Effects of Internationalization on Innovation in the Service Industry: Evidence from Korea

I. IntroductionA body of literature suggests that knowledge creation and innovation via learning has become increasingly critical for the success of a company with the advent of knowledge-based economy (Grant, 1996; Zahra and George, 2002; Vila and Kuster, 2007). A firm's ability to acquire, absorb, assimilate, adapt, create, exploit and use new knowledge is now considered one of the most important sources for sustaining competitive advantage (Wang and Ahmed, 2007). In this regard, a firm's international expansion tends to reinforce its organizational structure and business processes, thereby improving its capability for knowledge creation and extension (Castellani and Zanfei, 2007; Prashantham, 2005). International diversification has been proven to affect technology-based companies' ability to learn and perform in global markets (Hitt et ak, 1997; Zahra et ak, 2000).Empirical studies have investigated how internationalization may affect knowledge acquisition and learning effort, by analyzing the relationship between internationalization (via export mode) and firm innovation. Salomon and Shaver (2005) examined the impact of learning from export experience on firm innovation, measured by patent application counts, using a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms. In subsequent studies, Salomon (2006) investigated the role of export strategies in innovative productivity, and Salomon and Jin (2008) analyzed how learning from export experience might show heterogeneous impacts in different industries. Generally, a positive relationship between internationalization and firm innovation was found in this stream of research (Filipescu et ak, 2009; Castelliani and Zanfei, 2007; Trofimenko, 2008). While these studies were undertaken using a variety of data collected from manufacturing companies, we found little research that focused on the association between these rather widely used variables-intemationalization and innovation-in the context of the service industry. While some studies on the service industry also exit, they mainly concerned the impact of internationalization on overall firm performance (Capar and Kotabe, 2003; Goerzen and Makino, 2007) rather than on more specific variables such as innovation.While manufactured goods have dominated world trade over the years, the importance of trade in services is also growing, particularly for industrialized nations. In Singapore, exports comprise 69% of the total service production, while most European countries export between 10% and 20% of their service products, and the USA exports around 5% (Patterson, 2004). In Korea, whose economy is highly dependent on foreign markets, exports of service products accounted for 11% of national total exports in 2009. Furthermore, the outward foreign direct investment (FDI) flows in the service sector worldwide were $476 billion in 2002-2004, while those in the manufacturing sector remained only one-third ($165 billion) of the service sector FDI outflows (UNCTAD, 2008). In 1987-2005, 52% of all cross-border mergers and acquisitions (MA Miozzo and Miles, 2002; Drejer, 2004; Toivonen and Tuominen, 2009).Given this background, this study aims to contribute to the research of the internationalization-innovation link by examining such relationship in the service industry using a large dataset from South Korea (henceforth, Korea). We think that it would be a meaningful endeavor to apply this research framework to the service industry, given that a number of innovations have also been witnessed in this sector - for example, information technology, banking, and legal advice. While the potential strategic importance of international expansion on innovation can be emphasized in all industries, innovation in the service industry appears to be different from that in the manufacturing industry (Ietto-Gillies, 2002). …

The Chicken or the Egg: Granger-Causality between Trade and Innovation

While the literature is quite clear on the association between trade and innovation, there has been little explicit study of the direction of causality. This study uses all patents granted in the U.S. between 1987 and 1999, assigns them to probable industries of origin and sectors of use, then tests Granger-causality with trade flows in those same economic sectors. We run robustness checks on various measures of trade (imports versus exports, volume versus value of trade), and on various measures of innovation (patent counts, patent claims, citation-weighted patents, and patent counts weighted for originality or generality). Results at the aggregate level support the literature’s assumption that imports cause innovation which then leads to exports, but at the industry level causality is more complicated, running in both directions from imports (or exports) to and from innovation.

Spatial Errors in Count Data Regressions

AbstractCount data regressions are an important tool for empirical analyses ranging from analyses of patent counts to measures of health and unemployment. Along with negative binomial, Poisson panel regressions are a preferred method of analysis because the Poisson conditional fixed effects maximum likelihood estimator (PCFE) and its sandwich variance estimator are consistent even if the data are not Poisson-distributed, or if the data are correlated over time. Analyses of counts may however also be affected by correlation in the cross-section. For example, patent counts or publications may increase across related research fields in response to common shocks. This paper shows that the PCFE and its sandwich variance estimator are consistent in the presence of such dependence in the cross-section – as long as spatial dependence is time-invariant. We develop a test for time-invariant spatial dependence and provide code in STATA and MATLAB to implement the test.

Quantifying innovation in surgery.

The objectives of this study were to assess the applicability of patents and publications as metrics of surgical technology and innovation; evaluate the historical relationship between patents and publications; develop a methodology that can be used to determine the rate of innovation growth in any given health care technology. The study of health care innovation represents an emerging academic field, yet it is limited by a lack of valid scientific methods for quantitative analysis. This article explores and cross-validates 2 innovation metrics using surgical technology as an exemplar. Electronic patenting databases and the MEDLINE database were searched between 1980 and 2010 for "surgeon" OR "surgical" OR "surgery." Resulting patent codes were grouped into technology clusters. Growth curves were plotted for these technology clusters to establish the rate and characteristics of growth. The initial search retrieved 52,046 patents and 1,801,075 publications. The top performing technology cluster of the last 30 years was minimally invasive surgery. Robotic surgery, surgical staplers, and image guidance were the most emergent technology clusters. When examining the growth curves for these clusters they were found to follow an S-shaped pattern of growth, with the emergent technologies lying on the exponential phases of their respective growth curves. In addition, publication and patent counts were closely correlated in areas of technology expansion. This article demonstrates the utility of publically available patent and publication data to quantify innovations within surgical technology and proposes a novel methodology for assessing and forecasting areas of technological innovation.

Monitoring innovation in electrochemical energy storage technologies: A patent-based approach

Due to the suitability to balance the intermittency in decentralized systems with renewable sources, electrochemical energy storage possibilities have been analyzed in several studies, all highlighting the need for improvements in relevant techno-economic parameters. Particularly a reduction in the costs per cycle is much needed, which could either come from innovation in more cost-efficient manufacturing methods, a higher endurance of charge/discharge sequences or higher capacities. Looking at patent applications as a metric allows us to determine whether the necessary technological progress is indeed occurring, as the mandatory publication of the underlying inventions provides access to otherwise hidden R&D activities. Our paper contributes to the literature with a compilation of technological classes related to important battery types in the novel Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), which can be used to identify relevant patent applications of the competing technologies. Using the worldwide patent statistical database (PATSTAT), we find that promising technologies have been showing increasing patent counts in recent years. For example, the number of patent applications related to regenerative fuel cells (e.g. redox flow batteries) doubled from 2009 to 2011. Nevertheless, the volume of patent filings in technologies related to lithium remains unchallenged. Patent applications in this area are still growing, which indicates that the introduction of improved modules will continue. Using citation analysis, we have identified important patents and organizations for relevant candidate technologies. Our study underlines that electrochemical storage, and in particular lithium-based technologies, will play an increasingly important role in future energy systems.

Patents, Competition, and Firms’ Innovation Incentives

This paper presents fresh evidence on the interaction between industrial property rights (patents) and competition, and their joint effect on firms’ innovation. We use panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990–2006, as well as external information on European Patent Office and US Patent Office patent counts. We construct a new synthetic measure of competition and estimate the impact of patents on this measure at the industry level. Then, the effect of industry-wide competition and patenting on firms’ innovation is estimated at the firm level. Our results suggest that patents reduce the level of competition in the industry, whereas the effect of competition on innovation varies with the type of innovation indicator. Thus, by lowering competition, patents in an industry exert an indirect effect on innovation besides their direct effect. In addition, interaction effects between patents and competition indicate that patents soften the impact of competition changes on firms’ innovation.

Entrepreneurial Exits and Innovation

We examine how initial public offerings (IPOs) and acquisitions affect entrepreneurial innovation as measured by patent counts and forward patent citations. We construct a firm-year panel data set of all venture capital-backed biotechnology firms founded between 1980 and 2000, tracked yearly through 2006. We address the possibility of unobserved self-selection into exit mode by using coarsened exact matching, and in two additional ways: (1) comparing firms that filed for an IPO (or announced a merger) with those not completing the transaction for reasons unrelated to innovation, and (2) using an instrumental variables approach. We find that innovation quality is highest under private ownership and lowest under public ownership, with acquisition intermediate between the two. Together with a set of within-exit mode analyses, these results are consistent with the proposition that information confidentiality mechanisms shape innovation outcomes. The results are not explained by inventor-level turnover following exit events or by firms' preexit window dressing behavior. This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Shareholder Power and Corporate Innovation: Evidence from Hedge Fund Activism

This paper studies how hedge fund activism reshapes corporate innovation. Firms targeted by hedge fund activists experience an improvement in innovation efficiency during the five-year period following the intervention. Despite a tightening in R&D expenditures, target firms experience increases in innovation output, measured by both patent counts and citations, with stronger effects seen among firms with more diversified innovation portfolios. We also find that the reallocation of innovative resources and the redeployment of human capital contribute to the refocusing of the scope of innovation. Finally, additional tests refute alternative explanations attributing the improvement to mean reversion, sample attrition, management’s voluntary reforms, or activists’ stock-picking abilities.

Spatial Errors in Count Data Regressions

Count data regressions are an important tool for empirical analyses ranging from analyses of patent counts to measures of health and unemployment. Along with negative binomial, Poisson panel regressions are a preferred method of analysis because the Poisson conditional fixed effects maximum likelihood estimator (PCFE) and its sandwich variance estimator are consistent even if the data are not Poisson-distributed, or if the data are correlated over time. Analyses of counts may however also be affected by correlation in the cross-section. For example, patent counts or publications may increase across related research fields in response to common shocks. This paper shows that the PCFE and its sandwich variance estimator are consistent in the presence of such dependence in the cross-section - as long as spatial dependence is time-invariant. We develop a test for time-invariant spatial dependence and provide code in STATA and MATLAB to implement the test.

Re-examination Contribution of Academic Research to Development of Industrial Technologies

In this study, the author tries to reveal to what extent the academic work can be transferred into industrial technologies and the spillovers of university research, technically and geographically, by taking patent bibliometrics and citation analysis approach. Besides patent and citation counts, contribution indexes, Gross Contribution index, Technological Sector Contribution Index, and Technology Spillover index are introduced to show the impact of academic performance on development of industrial technologies of universities in Taiwan. The results indicate that both patent counts and contribution indexes present the research performance in development of industrial technologies, but reveal the meanings from different facets. Patent count shows the productivity, while contribution index presents the contribution under the context, which takes gross productivity into consideration. From the distribution of annual patenting activities, not only can the research productivity be observed, but the strategic shift in applying different types of patents.

Bridging Science and Technology through Academic-Industry Partnerships

Scientific research and its translation into commercialized technology is a driver of wealth creation and economic growth. Partnerships to foster such translational processes between public research organizations, such as universities and hospitals, and private firms are a policy tool that has attracted increased interest. Yet questions about the efficacy and the efficiency with which funds are used are subject to frequent debate. This paper examines empirical data from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation (DNATF), an agency that funds partnerships between universities and private companies to develop technologies important to Danish industry. We assess the effect of a unique mediated funding scheme that combines project grants with active facilitation and conflict management on innovative performance, namely the quantity, citation count and collaborative nature of patents and papers, by comparing funded and unfunded firms. Because randomization of the sample was not feasible, we address endogeneity around selection bias using a sample of qualitatively similar firms based on a funding decision score. This allows us to observe the local effect of samples in which we drop the best recipients and the worst non-recipients.

Can venture capital trigger innovation? New evidence from China

With the continuing globalisation of the world economy, countries seek to develop and support their venture capital market. Whether venture capital really can trigger innovation or not at all is of interest not only to academia but also to commercial firms, venture capital institutions and government agencies. Based on statistical data collected from the Chinese market, this paper aims to provide material insight on, firstly, whether venture capitals can influence innovation and, if so, by how much; and secondly, whether venture capital leads innovation or whether it is innovation which leads developments in venture capital. The innovation of the sample firms is quantified by the consideration of patent counts and associated productivity growth. The sample firms collected from a group of innovation active industries are selected by a number of discriminative covariates widely cited in the extant literature. The empirical findings demonstrate that venture capital has a positive but limited impact on innovations in the current market. Innovation and productivity growth in particular may also be triggered by the growth potential of firms. We therefore propose a few possible unique factors to explain the underlying mechanism of venture capital in promoting innovation within the context of the Chinese market.

Monitoring Innovation in Electrochemical Energy Storage Technologies: A Patent-based Approach

The spread of intermittent renewable energy sources increasingly shows the lack of appropriate decentralized energy storage solutions for grid support and residential applications. Patents are a good metric to determine whether the necessary technological progress is indeed happening, as the mandatory publication of the underlying invention gives access to otherwise hidden R&D activities. Our paper contributes to the literature with a compiled array of technological classes related to important battery types in the novel Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), which can be used to identify relevant patent applications of the competing technologies. Using the worldwide patent statistical database (PATSTAT), we find that promising technologies such as sodium-sulfur batteries and regenerative fuel cells (e.g. redox flow batteries) show increasing patent counts during the last years. The number of patent applications for regenerative fuel cells doubled from 2009 to 2011. Nevertheless, the patenting in technologies related to lithium is unchallenged. Annual patent applications in this area have reached very high levels in 2010 and 2011, allowing the conclusion that the introduction of improved modules will continue. Our analysis underlines that electrochemical storage and in particular lithium-based technologies can be expected to play an increasingly important role in future energy systems. Using the presented compilation of CPC groups, adjacent studies could identify the most important patents (for example by citation analysis) in the respective technologies and investigate technological progress in auspicious sub-branches in more detail.

What Affects Innovation More: Policy or Policy Uncertainty?

Motivated by a theoretical model, we empirically examine for 43 countries whether it is policy or policy uncertainty that affects technological innovation more. We find that innovation, measured by growth in patent counts, citations, and originality, is not, on average, affected by which policy is in place. Innovation, however, drops significantly during times of policy uncertainty measured by national elections. To establish causality, we use close presidential elections, whose timings are pre-determined and results are unpredictable, and ethnic fractionalization that are likely exogenous to policy and policy uncertainty. Political compromise, our paper concludes, is a plus for innovation.

A comparative study of patent counts by the inventor country and the assignee country

This paper compared and contrasted patent counts by examining the inventor country and the assignee country. An empirical analysis of the patent data revealed how assignment principles (i.e. by the inventor country and by the assignee county) and counting methods (i.e. whole counts, first country and fractional counts) generate different results. Quadrant diagrams were utilised to present the patent data of the 33 selected countries. When countries had similar patent counts by inventor country with patent counts by assignee country, all the countries allocated along the diagonal line in the quadrant diagram were developed countries. When countries had more patent counts by inventor than by assignee, developed countries were more likely to sit in the right upper section of the quadrant diagram, while more developing countries were situated in the left lower section. Countries with higher patent counts by assignee than by inventor were more likely to be tax havens. A significant contribution of this paper resides in the recommendation that patent counts be analysed using both the inventor country and the assignee country at the same time if meaningful implications from patent statistics are to be obtained.

Energy security and climate change: How oil endowment influences alternative vehicle innovation

Fast growing global energy needs raise concerns on energy supply security and climate change. Although policies addressing the two issues sometimes benefit one at the expense of the other, technology innovation, especially in alternative energy, provides a win–win solution to tackle both issues. This paper examines the effect of oil endowment on the patterns of technology innovation in the transportation sector, attempting to identify drivers of technology innovation in alternative energy. The analysis employs panel data constructed from patent data on five different types of automobile-related technologies from 1990 to 2002: oil extraction, petroleum refining, fuel cells, electric and hybrid vehicles (EHV) and vehicle energy efficiency. I find that countries with larger oil endowments perform less innovation on refining and alternative technologies. Conversely, higher gasoline prices positively impact the patent counts of alternative technologies and energy efficiency technology. The findings highlight the challenges and importance of policy designs in international climate change agreements.

The Role of Venture Capital Investments for Innovation in Young Technology-Based Firms

This paper examines the role of venture capital on a firm's innovation activities by using a data set of German technology-based firms founded between 1996 and 2005. Innovation is proxied by patent counts and an index of innovativeness which reflects the degree to which a young firm has developed new technologies based on its own or external resources. The results show that VC financing has a positive impact on both patenting and innovativeness, even if we account for endogeneity of VC financing.

Influences of counting methods on country rankings: a perspective from patent analysis

The counting of patents and citations is commonly used to evaluate technological innovation and its impact. However, in an age of increasing international collaboration, the counting of international collaboration patents has become a methodological issue. This study compared country rankings using four different counting methods (i.e. whole counting, straight counting, whole-normalized counting, complete-normalized counting) in patent, citation and citation-patent ratio (CP ratio) counts. It also observed inflation depending on the method used. The counting was based on the complete 1992---2011 patent and citation data issued by United States Patent and Trademark Office. The results show that counting methods have only minor effects on country rankings in patent count, citation count and CP ratio count. All four counting methods yield reliable country ranks in technology innovation capability and impact. While the influences of counting methods vary between patent count, citation count and CP ratio count, counting methods may exert slightly greater effects on CP ratio counts than on patent and citation counts. As for the inflation, the distributions of higher and lower inflation by the four counting methods are different in patent, citation and CP ratio counts.

Energy subsidies, structure of electricity prices and technological change of energy use

This paper addresses the impact of the structure of energy prices on technological change in renewable energy sources. It operates on two fields of research that are often not related to each other. Firstly, the increasing interest in environmental economics for the determinants of green technological change, and secondly the impact of government policies aimed at subsidizing energy prices. Recent research claims a positive relationship between energy prices and the number of patents in the fields of energy efficiency. This paper extends this research by investigating the impact of the price structure of electricity on patent counts in 1) renewable energy sources, 2) wind energy and 3) solar power. In nearly all OECD countries in the period 1990–2006 industrial energy users pay a lower price per energy unit than households due, among others, to government subsidy policies. The empirical results show that reducing government subsidies and hence increasing the electricity price of (large) industrial electricity users relative to the price paid by (small) residential users provides a clear incentive to increase inventions as measured by number of patents in the technical fields of solar and wind energy. These results are an important input in the debate on reducing government support to large energy users.