Total Patent Research Articles

Digital industry agglomeration and urban innovation: Evidence from China

This study explores the relationship between digital economy and urban innovation from the perspective of economic agglomeration. Based on a panel data set of 285 Chinese cities from 2009 to 2019 and the classification of the digital industry by the National Bureau of Statistics, this study shows that an increased level of digital industry agglomeration significantly contributes to urban innovation, with more pronounced effects observed in larger cities and those in eastern and western regions. Further analysis of industry heterogeneity reveals that digital industry agglomeration not only boosts innovation within the digital industry but also enhances it in non-digital industries. Additionally, digital industry agglomeration appears more conducive to promoting innovation in green technology industries than in non-green technology industries. The mechanism analysis reveals the mediating effect of data capital accumulation, market size expansion, and digital technology spillover on urban innovation. The Sobel test reveals that data capital accumulation has the largest mediating effect on total patents, while digital technology spillover has the strongest mediating effect on invention patents. This study enriches the existing understanding of the agglomeration effect of the digital industry on urban innovation and sheds light on the mechanisms driving urban innovation in emerging economies.

Path dependence in environment-related innovation: evidence from listed firms in China

ABSTRACT This paper studies the path dependence effect in corporate innovation based on the patent data of Chinese listed firms. The results provide robust evidence of the path dependence in technology innovation. The accumulated stock of brown patents reduces the ratio of green patents to total patents newly granted, thus inhibiting green structural changes in innovation. The accumulated stock of green patents increases the ratio of green patents in total patents granted, promoting structural change towards green innovation. The path dependence effect exists in both green inventions and green utility model patents. The heterogeneity analysis shows that both brown and green patent stocks of heavy polluting firms have a weaker effect on the ratio of green inventions than non-heavy polluting firms. The negative path dependence effect of brown patents on green innovation is stronger in firms with large scale, state ownership, and a high level of environmental regulation. However, the negative path dependence effects on green innovation can be alleviated for firms with superior environmental and financial performance. This suggests that the government has to create economic incentives to break the path dependence and encourage firms to engage in green innovation.

Geostrategic study of the evolution of energy harvesting systems based on the patent activity of flywheels and regenerative shock absorbers

This paper analyses the technological activity on energy harvesting and storage systems, such as flywheels and regenerative shock absorbers, for support of renewable energy and electric vehicle applications. The activity is analyzed based on the evolution of the patents over the last 20 years, based on databases such as Patbase and Derwnet. The data reveal that less than 50 % of the total flywheels patents and utility models are granted. China is identified as the leading innovator in this area, followed by the United States, Japan, and Germany, which collectively account for 84 % of all patent families. A ranking of related companies and institutes is dominated by Chinese companies such as CANDELA (SHENZHEN) TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION CO., SHENYANG WEIKONG NEW ENERGY TECH CO., followed by German and American companies such as LUK LAMELLEN, VYCON, Siemens, and Caterpillar Inc. The leading regions on regenerative shock absorbers technologies are Germany, China, USA, and the European Patent Office (EPO). The study shows a leadership of Germany accounting for 39 % of the priority patents. The study also identified the top 20 applicants with the highest number of patent families, which included European companies such as SCHAEFFLER AG, HYDAC, VOLKSWAGEN AG, and Continental Automotive GmbH.

The Impact of Financial Efficiency and Renewable Energy Consumption on CO2 Emission Reduction in GCC Economies: A Panel Data Quantile Regression Approach

As prominent oil producers, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have played a significant role in the global energy market. However, as the world’s attention increasingly shifts towards environmental sustainability, understanding the implications of the GCC’s economic activities on CO2 emissions becomes indispensable. This research paper investigates the relationship between specific economic indicators and their impact on CO2 emissions in the GCC from 2001 to 2021. This study employs quantile regression, a robust statistical method that estimates the conditional quantiles of a response variable given a set of predictor variables. The findings reveal several essential insights: Financial institution efficiency is significant and negative at a 1% level at the lower (10th, −83,537.3) and higher quantiles (90th, −549,002.3). The relationship between the GDP per capita and CO2 emissions varies across quantiles, highlighting the complexity of the growth–environment nexus. Total patents exhibit a positive and significant relationship with emissions, underscoring the importance of directing innovation towards environmentally sustainable solutions. Renewable energy consumption displays a nuanced relationship with CO2 emissions, with a more substantial negative impact observed at higher consumption levels. This underscores the potential of renewable energy to mitigate emissions when integrated at scale. This study’s outcomes hold crucial policy implications for GCC countries as they seek to align economic growth with environmental sustainability. The findings emphasize the importance of fostering financial institution efficiency, promoting green innovation, and expanding renewable energy sources to reduce emissions.

Government political ideology and green innovation: evidence from OECD countries

In this paper, we examine the relationship between government political ideology and green innovation. We employ data on 20 democratic countries with multi-party systems between 2010 and 2018. Green innovation is measured by the total patents in environment-related technologies. We find a negative relationship between left-leaning government and green innovation, suggesting that leftist governments are associated with low green innovations. This finding is consistent with the political assumption that leftist governments resist technological advancement because it may cause unemployment, whereas rightist promotes technological advancement to benefit the capitalist. We also find that the effect of political ideology remains the same during electoral years, implying that elections do not present any pressure on parties to change their course towards green innovation. Our result implies that partisan politics matters in finding solutions to unending environmental challenges. The results are robust to alternative measurements of variables and econometric identification strategies.

Assessing the Robot-Assisted Surgical Systems between Developed and Developing Economies

Robot-assisted surgery (RAS) is a revolutionary technology for the surgeons, doctors and physicians. Although RAS deployment is rapid since 2019, despite decades of successful robotic assisted surgeries in the developed economies that have positively impacted millions of patients, RAS was barely explored by the developing countries compared to the developed countries whereby capabilities to enhance and improve the levels of expertise is limited besides acquisition and operating costs. This paper aims to raise awareness and compare what is the future of RAS in selected developing countries given its multitude of needs and challenges? Is RAS still in early days and too expensive to be put to general use in these developing economies today? We applied indicators to test the adoption of RAS using the economic consideration of robotic surgery in health economics. We examine the likelihood of acquiring and using RAS with different market characteristics from 2000 to 2022. We used data on traditional and robot-assisted surgical interventions and transform it into an improved version on Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) and Willingness-to-Pay for Robot-Assisted Surgery (WTPR). Asia growth was spectacular. China’s participation resulted in closing the gap much faster in advanced medical technology and treatment such as RAS between developing and developed economies beside knowledge diffusion. South Koreans had catch up with the Europeans i.e., Italy, Germany, France and UK. China’s total patents had explosive growth and the robot density was among the highest among the selected economies compared in this study.

A timely helping hand: China‐U.S. Trade War, government subsidy, and firm innovation

AbstractThis paper investigates the impact and mechanism of the China‐U.S. trade war on firm innovation in China exploiting the trade war as a quasi‐natural experiment using firm‐level data from 2015 to 2020. We apply textual analysis to annual reports of listed firms to identify treatment and control groups. Our DID estimates show that while the trade war is a negative shock, it has increased the number of total patent applications, invention patent applications, and non‐invention patent applications by 6.0%, 3.7%, and 4.1%, respectively. We also observe that government subsidies could help firms resist adverse shocks on time with more innovation outcomes. Furthermore, we find the pertinence of government subsidy. The government tended to grant subsidies to firms that have trade connections with the U.S. and firms would use subsidies for R&D to increase innovation. Overall, we find that the trade war prompts the government to increase subsidies for firms, thereby boosting innovation.

Technology and gender: Understanding the changing dynamics of female unemployment in the G7 countries

Technology has profound effects on labour market dynamics. Numerous studies have highlighted the unique opportunities and challenges that technological change presents to specific demographic groups. The aim of the study is to examine the long-term impact of technological changes within organisations on female unemployment at a macro level. From the perspective of the contingency approach and economic growth theories, the research conducts a panel cointegration analysis employing CCE-MG and AMG long-term panel cointegration estimators. The data on the female unemployment rate, the percentage of R&D expenditure in GDP and the ICT patents in total patents in the G7 countries for 1985–2020 is sourced from the OECD statistics. The analysis indicates the presence of an effect of technological change on the female unemployment rate as well as the national variations in their relationship. In particular, in three countries out of seven (Germany, the UK, the USA), there is the relationship between technological advancements and female unemployment. For the most part, increases in the percentage of R&D expenditure and ICT patents augment the female unemployment, though in Germany a rise in R&D expenditure leads to a decrease in it. The results will contribute to understanding the impact of technology-driven changes in organisations on gender-based labour inequality. The research highlights the complexity of the impact of technological advancements on the female employment and underscores the need for shaping related government policies by considering each country’s specific conditions.

‘With no siblings, but with a home’: Single Patent-code Inventions (SPIs) and regional technological diversification

ABSTRACT We investigate the extent to which the ‘siloed’ nature of regions’ knowledge base affects their technological diversification. Drawing on recombinant innovation theory, we maintain that regions find it harder to specialise in technologies with a more siloed knowledge base, and that this hampering effect is more pronounced for more cognitively unrelated new technologies. Using data from the European Patent Office, with respect to sub-national regions of the EU28, we proxy the siloed degree of the regional knowledge base with the weight of Single Patent-code Inventions (SPIs) over total patents by region-technologies and test our hypotheses over the 1986–2017 period. We find that the relative number of SPIs by regional technologies – i.e. the siloed extent of these technologies – negatively correlates with the regions’ capacity to specialise in them. This negative correlation attenuates with respect to the specialisation in more cognitively closer new technologies. For very high levels of technological relatedness, the correlation becomes positive and the SPI incidence tends to enable technological diversification, rather than contrasting it. Policy implications are drawn accordingly.

Patent collateral and the trajectory of innovation

Taking the Chinese policy project of patent collateral policy as the quasi-natural experiment setting, we investigate the impact of patent collateral policy on the corporate innovation trajectory. We find that patent collateral increases applications of exploitative patent and its proportion in total patent applications, but no significant impact on exploratory innovation is observed. This finding is still robust in a series of robustness tests. The mechanism tests show that the impact of patent collateral promotes firms' exploitative innovation mainly by increasing the accessibility of firms' bank loans. The economic effects test shows that the patent collateral policy can reduce the deviation of analyst forecast and ease corporate financing constraints, which plays an important role in stabilizing capital market expectations. Heterogeneity analysis shows that patent collateral policy mainly promotes exploitative innovation of companies whose senior executives have no financial background, non-high-tech companies and non-SOEs. This paper enriches the research on the innovation incentive effects of patent collateral policy by providing an empirical investigation of the impact of patent collateral policy on corporate innovation trajectory. It helps to provide insights for emerging market countries as to improve patent collateral policy to promote the quality of corporate innovation.

Trade policy uncertainty and the patent bubble in China: evidence from machine learning

ABSTRACT This paper draws upon resource dependence theory and investigates how trade policy uncertainty affects firm strategic innovation management in China. Adopting a novel machine learning approach called Word2Vec, we construct and validate a measure of firm-level managers’ perceived trade policy uncertainty (TPU). We find that TPU has a positive effect on the number of total patent applications, but this positive effect is totally driven by low-quality patents instead of high-quality patents. Moreover, we document that firms have stronger incentives for such strategic innovation behavior when the underlying firms are more financially constrained, and/or when the management is more myopic.

Interdependencies between international innovation partnerships: the case of Central and Eastern Europe

PurposeCompetitively multipolar international system demands bilateral and multilateral partnerships. Joint innovation signals close partnerships. Regional proximity of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the European Union (EU) defines its research and development objectives. These objectives are additionally subjected to the USA’s geopolitical strategy in this geographical area. Hence, CEE’s limited resources require limited resources make international innovation cooperation. This paper aims to analyse whether and how CEE countries make international innovation cooperation decisions.Design/methodology/approachThis paper used Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) database of total patent applications filed to the patent cooperation treaty (PCT) with co-applicants from abroad, where co-patents with at least one foreign inventor present a measure of international innovation partnership. A vector autoregression analysis and impulse response function were used to analyse international innovation partnership choices of eight CEE OECD countries for the period 1990–2018.FindingsInnovation with the EU is of collaborative nature, commonly displaying complementary properties with the rest of the examined innovation partners, while co-patenting with the Russia and China act as substitutes or complements. Co-patenting with Russia is the most versatile, displaying both properties of collaboration and competition. Some countries exhibit complementarity in co-patenting activities with multiple partners. The significance levels of these relationships vary, indicating varying degrees of impact. Overall, these findings highlight the complex dynamics of co-patenting activities and the influence of different partners on countries’ collaborative innovation strategies.Research limitations/implicationsIn addition to significant relationships, insignificant relationships as well as those that could bring about greater synergy are flagged in the paper. Those relationships portray possible direction into which national funds could be channelled to incite cooperation between different sectors and countries, especially as innovation partnerships are not always successful and require a long time period to materialise.Originality/valueBy examining bilateral innovation partnerships, this study provides an insight into the strategic political and economic spheres of influence in the CEE region.

Does the Belt and Road Initiative promote international innovation cooperation?

International innovation cooperation is crucial to the enhancement of national technological innovation capabilities in the context of globalization. Does the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as a major international initiative, promote innovation cooperation between China and BRI partner countries? Taking the top 80 global countries in innovation capability as the research sample, this paper uses the DID method to answer this question. The empirical results show that the BRI indeed promoted innovation cooperation between them to a certain extent. Specifically, it significantly increased the proportion of their cooperative patents in China’s total patents, and the promotion effect was more obvious for countries with better economic foundations. Furthermore, the mechanism tests indicate that shortening the institutional distance, strengthening the exchange of scientific and technological talents, and stimulating cultural differences were important mechanisms promoting their innovation cooperation. Although the BRI did not significantly increase the proportion of cooperative patents in BRI partner countries’ total patents, it effectively improved their innovation foundations and capabilities.

Haste makes waste? Quantity-based subsidies under heterogeneous innovations

With quantity-based innovation targets and subsidy programs launched since the mid-2000s, China has seen a patent surge, accounting for 46% of the world’s total patent applications in 2020; however, the overall patent quality has been declining after 2008. This paper develops a Schumpeterian growth model featuring innovating firms’ quantity–quality trade-off between radical and incremental innovations, and decomposes subsidies’ aggregate impact into quantity and quality channels. We calibrate the model to Chinese firm-level data in the early 2010s. Our quantitative analysis shows that the quality channel effects are negative and dominant, and quantity-based subsidies in that period reduce the TFP growth rate and welfare by 0.19 percentage points and 3.31%, respectively. We evaluate welfare gains under a constrained planner’s problem, and propose skill subsidies which are quality-biased and effectively recover the optimal allocation.

Employment Trends and Relative Influence of U.S. Retail Subsector Employments on GDP

This paper studies employment trends of the U.S. retail industry and its twelve subsectors for the period 1998 through 2021. The retail subsectors are: motor vehicle and parts dealers (NAICS 441), furniture and home furnishing stores (NAICS 442), electronics retail stores (NAICS 443), building material retail stores (NAICS 444), food and beverage stores (NAICS 445), health and personal care retail stores (NAICS 446), gasoline stations (NAICS 447), clothing and accessories retail stores (NAICS 448), sporting goods, hobby goods, books, and music retail stores (NAICS 451), general merchandise stores (NAICS 452), miscellaneous retail stores (NAICS 453), and nonstore retail stores (NAICS 454). Comparing the pre-pandemic (2017-19) and post-pandemic (2019-21) employment growth rates, this study finds nonstore retailers (NAICS 454) and Food and beverages stores (NAICS 445) to be the most pandemic-proof subsectors in terms of retail employment. Besides multi-jurisdictional employment trends of this industry, this paper also explores the state-level influence of retail sub-sectoral employments on U.S. GDP using a fixed panel regression model. The retail subsectors that displayed statistically significant positive correlation with GDP are motor vehicle dealerships, health and personal care stores, clothing stores, and nonstore retailers such as electronic shopping and mail order businesses. Among the control variables, state-level total patent counts had statistically significant positive correlation with GDP.

Тенденции развития грузовых платформ карьерных самосвалов

The article presents the trends in the development of the dump body of mining dump trucks, identified during patent research for the project entitled “Development and creation of an unmanned shuttle-type mine truck with a payload of 220 tons”. The analysis of patents was carried out on the dynamics of patenting, its geography and patent holders. The depth of the patent search was 25 years. Based on the results of analyzing the identified patents, a forecast was made on the development of technical solutions for the dump body of mining dump trucks. It was found that: the dump body designs have been actively patented since 2013; the USA is the leader among the patent holders; the main trend in the development of the mining dump truck designs is caused by the need to cut down the specific metal content, as well as to reduce wear and sticking; since 2014, there has been a stable interest in patenting linings; 51% of the total patent base obtained belongs to 5 major global companies that manufacture dump trucks and 3 enterprises that produce equipment for mining machines. The identified technical solutions will allow evaluating the existing layout and design solutions, and developing new solutions by modeling in the discrete-body dynamics and the solid-body dynamics environments to calculate the stress-and-strain state of dump body for mining dump trucks.

Emerging Technologies in the Development of Metallic and Bimetallic Nanoparticles in the Last Decade: A Scientometric Analysis

The development of nanotechnology and nanomaterials has had an upward surge in recent years, not only because of the type of technology but also because of the unique properties and characteristics of nanomaterials. This growth motivated us to make an analysis of emerging technologies in the development of metallic, bimetallic, and metal-oxide nanoparticles covering a period of ten years, which have had a high impact on the development of different products applied to biomedicine, electronics, agriculture, energy, plastics, etc. This research found more than one and a half million scientific papers under the keyword ‘nanotechnology’ in the Scopus database. This article reports a scientometric analysis where aspects such as articles with the highest number of citations, countries with the highest production, representative institutions in the field, authors and the relation of citations, correlations between them, keyword analysis, as well as the most studied topics in this field were investigated. On the other hand, the number of patents produced was reviewed in a general way. The databases Scopus, Journal Citation Report, VOSviewer, and other computer tools were used for the analysis. The results showed the United States (17.3%) and China (15.3%) as the countries with the greatest impact on studying metallic and bimetallic nanoparticles, with a high correlation between different countries. It is worth highlighting the participation of India with 10.1% and more than twice as many scientific papers as Germany; in the case of patents, the United States and China accounted for 55.3% of the total patents.

Fruits as nutraceuticals: A review of the main fruits included in nutraceutical patents

Fruits have relevant usefulness in the elaboration of nutraceutical compositions and, as it is considered a “natural medicine”, its market has been growing exponentially each year. Fruits, in general, contain a large source of phytochemicals, carbohydrates, vitamins, amino acids, peptides and antioxidants that are of interest to be prepared as nutraceuticals. The biological properties of its nutraceuticals can range from antioxidant, antidiabetic, antihypertensive, anti-Alzheimer, antiproliferative, antimicrobial, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, among others. Furthermore, the need for innovative extraction methods and products reveals the importance of developing new nutraceutical compositions. This review was developed by searching patents of nutraceuticals from January 2015 until January 2022 in Espacenet, the search database of the European Patent Office (EPO). Of 215 patents related to nutraceuticals, 43% (92 patents) were including fruits, mainly berries. A great number of patents were focused on the treatment of metabolic diseases, representing 45% of the total patents. The principal patent applicant was the United States of America (US), with 52%. The patents were applied by researchers, industries, research centers and institutes. It is important to highlight that from 92 fruit nutraceutical patent applications reviewed, 13 already have their products available on the market.

A Strategic Analysis of Patents for Healthcare Management

Patents related to healthcare management software and hardware have played an essential role in international competition in the healthcare field in recent years. The study aimed to conduct a strategic analysis of patents in healthcare management based on the theory of competitive strategy and expectation. The results can be an essential reference for the patent layout of healthcare-related enterprises and the promotion of the commercial value of patents. The study took the WIPS Global database as the object, adopted the keyword patent retrieval method, as well as retrieved and analysed 1,731,925 patent materials related to software and hardware for global healthcare management from 2012 to 2022. The Description, IP competitiveness, Applicant Ranking, Technical vs Market share, and Activity index of global patent abstracts were analysed. The results show that patents were divided by section as A (The number of human necessities patents is 6864, accounting for 7% of the total patents); B (performing operations & transporting, 8379, 9%); G (physics, 47340, 49%); H (electricity, 27254, 28%). The results can be used as a reference for enterprises to carry out healthcare management patent layouts and promote commercial value.

The geographical dynamics of global R&D collaboration networks in robotics: Evidence from co-patenting activities across urban areas worldwide.

The focus of this study is on the geography of robotics Research and Development (R&D) activities. The objectives are, first, to identify hotspots in robotics R&D worldwide, and second, to characterise structures and dynamics of global robotics R&D collaboration networks through detailed geographical lenses of global urban areas. We use patents as marker for R&D activities, and accordingly focus on technologically oriented R&D, drawing on information from patents applied for between 2002 and 2016. We employ an appropriate search strategy to identify relevant robotics patents based on detailed levels of the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) and assign patents to more than 900 global urban areas based on the inventor addresses. The co-patent networks are examined from a Social Network Analysis (SNA) perspective by means of robotics co-patents, contributing to a global network where urban areas are the nodes inter-linked by joint inventive activities recorded in robotics patents. Global SNA measures illustrate structures and dynamics of the network as a whole, while local measures indicate the specific positioning and roles of urban areas in the network. The results are original in characterising the global spatial emergence of this generic new industry, highlighting prominent urban hotspots in terms of specialisation in robotics R&D, pointing to a global shift reflected by the increasing role of emerging economies, in particular China. The global robotics R&D has grown significantly both in total patenting and also in terms of R&D collaboration activities between urban areas. Also, for the networks, growth is not equally distributed, but is rather characterised by significant spatial shifts, both in terms of cities declining or climbing up the specialisation ranking, but even more in terms of the spatial network structure.