5. Technological advantage

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Specialisation in ICT patents more than doubled in India during 2002-15 and increased by more than 50% in China.

Innovations in enabling technologies such as information and communication technologies (ICT) and technologies addressing societal needs related to health and the environment have the potential to benefit people worldwide. Information contained in patent documents helps to shed light on the relative specialisation of countries with regard to these technologies.

Between 2002 and 2015, a number of economies, especially China and India, increased their relative specialisation in ICT, as measured by the index of revealed technology advantage (RTA). The average decrease in specialisation of OECD countries (-7% on average) between 2002-05 and 2012-15 conceals a diverse picture. For example, Korea and Finland decreased their specialisation in ICT-patented technologies by more than 20%, while specialisation increased in Israel and Sweden by approximately 20% or more.

While OECD countries, overall, did not increase their specialisation in health or environmental applications, fairly heterogeneous patterns emerge. Health-related technologies saw many OECD countries further increase their RTA over the period considered. Among them, the Netherlands more than doubled its RTA in health technologies and Korea substantially reduced the relative lack of specialisation exhibited the previous decade. Conversely, China despecialised over the same period.

Somewhat similar patterns can be observed in the case of environmental technologies, which saw OECD economies such as Denmark and New Zealand increase their RTA by more than 50%. Conversely, BRIICS countries appear to have despecialised by more than 20%, overall.

Definitions

The revealed technological advantage (RTA) index measures the share of an economy’s patents in a specific technology relative to the share of total patents owned. The index is calculated on the basis of patent families within the Five IP Offices (IP5), by location of the inventor(s).

Patents in ICT rely on the International Patent Classification (IPC) codes detailed in Inaba and Squicciarini (2017), and reflect recent developments in ICT, notably in networks, mobile communication, security, data analysis and human interfaces.

Health-related patents are identified using the WIPO IPC-technology concordance (2013), and cover pharmaceutical and medical technology patents.

Environmental technology patents are identified using refined search strategies based on the IPC and the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), and draw upon the expertise of patent examiners at the European Patent Office (EPO), as described in Haščič and Migotto (2015).

Measurability

The RTA index is equal to zero when the economy has no patents in a given field, equals 1 when the economy’s share in the technology field is equivalent to its share in all fields (no specialisation), and rises above 1 when specialisation is observed. Given the way the RTA is compiled, economies with relatively low levels of patenting may appear highly specialised in certain technologies, as their activities are more likely to be concentrated in only a few fields.

International Patent Classification codes attributed by patent examiners during the examination process indicate the technological domains to which inventions belong. IPC classifications are revised periodically to account for the emergence of new technologies and the evolution of existing ones. This may lead to the reclassification of patents into different classes.

The use of data from other patent offices may change the patterns observed, as companies within and across technology fields may behave differently and pursue different innovative strategies in different markets.