Revealed Technology Advantage Research Articles

Patent activity in the field of decarbonization technologies

Purpose: the aim of the research is to explore the global trends in the development of the inventive space in the field of decarbonization and to identify the degree of their compliance with the patterns of patent activity in the Russian economy.Methods: patent data for the period 2010–2022, aggregated by the search engines of Rospatent, the World Intellectual Property Organization, Google Patents, Espacenet and Questel Orbit, were used to conduct the research. The analysis of global inventive activity in the field of decarbonization was provided for Class Y02, subclass Y04S and group B09 of the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC). The analysis of patenting pattern in the Russian economy was performed in accordance with the codes of the IPC Green Inventory. The relative technological advantages of Russia in the development of technologies to achieve carbon neutrality are analyzed on the basis of data from the RTA (Revealed Technology Advantage) index.Results: it was established that the high dynamics of global inventive activity in the field of decarbonization has not yet led to a multiple gap between patents and patent families, which indicates that a large volume of technological developments in the field of carbon neutrality are at relatively early stages of market maturity. It was determined that the leading positions of developers of relevant technological solutions are shifting from Japanese to Chinese and South Korean companies that are actively developing such advanced technological directions as energy storage and its production using alternative sources. Russian copyright holders demonstrate a relatively higher specialization in developments for nuclear power and railway transport systems, unlike foreign representatives. The decarbonization areas represented by domestic developments in the field of alternative energy production are characterized by significantly lower values of RTA index.Conclusions and Relevance: the space of inventive activity in the field of decarbonisation technologies forms the ability to identify and analyse a network of both explicit and non-obvious interrelations of these technologies with developments from other technological fields. This approach determines the possibility of purposeful design interdisciplinary cooperation chains between developers of indirectly correlated technological developments and manufacturers of the end products.

Differentiating artificial intelligence activity clusters in Australia

We demonstrate how cluster analysis underpinned by analysis of revealed technology advantage can be used to differentiate geographic regions by activity in artificial intelligence (AI). Our analysis uses novel datasets on Australian AI businesses, intellectual property patents and labour markets to explore location, concentration and intensity of AI activities across 333 geographical regions. We find that Australia's AI business and innovation activity is clustered in geographic locations with higher investment in research and development. Through cluster analysis we identify three tiers of AI capability regions that are developing across the economy: ‘AI hotspots’ (10 regions), ‘Emerging AI regions’ (85 regions) and ‘Nascent AI regions’ (238 regions). While the AI hotspots are mainly concentrated in central business district (CBD) locations, there are examples when they also appear outside CBD in areas where there has been significant investment in innovation and technology hubs. Policy makers and investors can use these results to learn about the current landscape of AI business and innovation activities in Australia, identify potential growth opportunities in AI capabilities and to guide future policy and business decisions.

Impact of Patent Quality on Firm Performance: A Case of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

This study examines the relationship between 287 pharmaceutical firms’ patent quality and their performance, measured by the profitability ratio and return on assets (ROA) in India. ROA measures the economic efficiency in relation to its overall resource, whereas the profitability ratio measures how much a firm can earn a profit on a rupee of sales. Based on the theoretical model, this study hypothesized that the quality of both product and process innovation positively impacts the firm performance. The quality of patent (innovation) is measured through Revealed Technology Advantage (RTA) and Relative Patent Position (RPP) in the most important technology, i.e. a technology where firms have a maximum patent. RTA measures the technological competencies in one particular technological field compared to other firms. On the other hand, RPP measures the firms leading position in a technological field compared to leader firms in that technology. The results drawn for both quality indicators (RTA and RPP) using quantile regression find significant differences among product and process innovation. Moreover, this study indicates that pharmaceutical firms should enhance their R&D capabilities and the leading position in the most important technology to increase their performance.

Regional Branching and Key Enabling Technologies: Evidence from European Patent Data

abstractThis article investigates the role of key enabling technologies (KETs) in regional branching. Taking into account the general purpose properties of these technologies, and referring to recombinant innovation theories, we argue that KETs knowledge could attenuate the effect that regional branching ascribes to technological relatedness, giving regions more scope for their technological diversification strategies. Furthermore, we claim that regions could benefit from this KETs effect, even if they are followers in their development, thanks to interregional spillovers from closer KETs leaders. Combining regional patent and economic data from a thirty-year panel (1980–2010) of twenty-six European countries, we actually find that KETs negatively moderate the role of technological relatedness for regional specialization in new technological fields, captured by a revealed technology advantage index. KETs knowledge also increases the number of new technological specializations. This positive effect more than compensates the previous negative moderation effect, so that the net impact of KETs on regional branching is positive. Supportive evidence is also found for KETs cross-regional spillovers. Overall, the results provide scientific support for the recent European Commission recommendation to plug KETs into the policy toolbox for smart specialization strategies inspired by regional branching.

Using patent analysis to explore corporate growth

This study applies patent analysis to discuss the influences of the three aspects of patent trait--a firm's revealed technology advantage in its most important technological field (RTAMIT), relative patent position in its most important technological field (RPPMIT), and patent share in its most important technological field (PSMIT)--upon corporate growth and discusses the moderation effect of relative growth rate of its most important technological field (RGRMIT) in the American pharmaceutical industry. The results demonstrate that the three relationships between corporate growth and the three aspects of patent trait are positive, and verify that RGRMIT moderates the three relationships. This study suggests that pharmaceutical companies should enhance their R&D capabilities, the degree of leading position, and concentration of R&D investment in their most important technological fields to increase their growth. Finally, this study classifies the pharmaceutical companies into four types, and provides some suggestions to them.

The relationship between a firm's patent quality and its market value — The case of US pharmaceutical industry

This study examined the relationships between corporate market value and four patent quality indicators – relative patent position (RPP), revealed technology advantage (RTA), Herfindahl–Hirschman Index of patents (HHI of patents), and patent citations – in the US pharmaceutical industry. The results showed that RPP and patent citations were positively associated with corporate market value, but HHI of patents was negatively associated with it, while RTA was not significantly related to it. Thus, if pharmaceutical companies want to enhance their market value, they should increase their leading positions in their most important technological fields, cultivate more diversity of technological capabilities, and raise innovative value of their patents. In addition, this study found that market value of pharmaceutical companies with high patent counts was higher than that of pharmaceutical companies with low patent counts, and suggested that pharmaceutical companies with low patent counts should increase RPP in their most technological fields, decrease HHI of patents, or raise patent citations to further enhance their market value. Furthermore, this study developed a classification for the pharmaceutical companies to divide them into four types, and provided some suggestions to them.