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Owing to increased energy demands, China has become the world’s top CO2 emitter, with electricity generation accounting for the majority of emissions. Therefore, the Chinese Government aspires to achieve a low-carbon transformation of the electric industry by enhancing its green innovation capacity. However, little attention has been paid to the green development of electric technology. Thus, this paper aims to uncover the spatiotemporal evolution of electric technology in the context of China’s low-carbon transformation through patent analysis.

Using granted green invention patent data for China’s electric industry between 2000 and 2021, this paper conducted an exploratory, spatial autocorrelation and time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) analysis to reveal the landscape of electric technology.

Exploratory analysis shows that the average growth rate of electric technology is 8.1%, with spatial heterogeneity, as there is slower growth in the north and west and faster growth in the south and east. In addition, electric technology shows spatial clustering in local areas. Finally, the time-varying DID analysis provides positive evidence that low-carbon policies improve the green innovation capacity of electric technology.

The different effects of the low-carbon pilot policy (LCPC) on R&D subjects and the LCPC’s effectiveness in enhancing the value of patented technology were not revealed.

This paper reveals the spatiotemporal evolutionary characteristics of electric technology in mainland China. The results can help the Chinese Government clarify how to carry out innovative development in the electric industry as part of the low-carbon transformation and provide a theoretical basis and research direction for newcomers in this field.

Although Public Research Institutions (PRIs) are large technology producers, they lack automated information tools that follow technical and scientific criteria for assessing and valuing patents. The assessment and valuation processes are stages of technology transfer (TT) that make it possible to obtain productive arrangements and guide the efforts of those involved in the development, maintenance and negotiation. This study aims to analyze the hybrid model of assessment and valuation of technologies by Soares (2018), applying the ‘Valorativo' software. In addition to patent value and indicator scores, the methods allow an understanding of the technology portfolio and its management.

This research is quali-quantitative, following an approach of applied nature and descriptive objectives. The research has bibliographical, documental and case study features based on the software development methodologies described in the study and the theoretical framework.

The Valorativo software assisted in the analysis of ten patents on PRIs. With the data collection and patent analysis, PAT1 scored highest among engineering patents, PAT3 scored highest among pharmaceutical patents and PAT10 scored highest among biotechnology patents. Five of the assessed patents resulted in a surplus of net present value (NPV), final net present value (NPVF) and royalties; revenue expectations outpaced investments.

The authors based the developed software on Soares’s (2018) methodology, with additional calculations and graphs. The Web software and the spreadsheet with Visual Basic for Application (VBA) were developed to deal with the patents assessment and valuation, helping in the analysis of their Legal Value, Technological Value and Market Conditions in the assessment process, and the Discounted Cash Flow and NPV in the valuation process.

The software helps with patent analysis and can generate indicators for traders, technology holders and researchers. Thus, it was necessary to understand and develop a theoretical-applied framework to outline and replicate the methodology clearly and easily.

The number of patents in China has grown rapidly in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how patents impact economic development in China.

This paper developed an empirical model by using panel data of 42 China's patent-intensive industries to investigate the economic contribution made by Chinese patent-intensive manufacturing industries.

This paper found that the intensity of valid patents is strongly positively related to economic growth. The intensity of yearly added patents presented an inverse U-shaped and a U-shaped curve with the economy made by China’s patent-intensive industries. The correlativity mainly depended on whether the patent intensity converges near the economic indicators. Meanwhile, from the perspective of input–output efficiency, for China’s patent-intensive industries, R&D institutes were overinvested, followed by R&D intensity and R&D staff.

Investigating patent influence on economic development is quite complex research. Existing studies have mainly focused on patent protection in legal systems, but have not provided a definitive answer to what the real influence is. This study sought to narrow this gap from the patent economy perspective.

This study aims to analyze the correlation between the investments in the Brazilian Space Agency (BSA) and the patenting process.

The methodology used was a statistical analysis through correlation and linear regression between the secondary data of investments made by the federal government, retrieved from the Transparency Portal, in the BSA and the patenting process, taking into consideration the number of invention, utility model and certificate of addition of invention.

After a brief presentation of the emergence of innovation and patent applications with the investments of governments in space agencies, this study presents the analysis of information in different times of investment that showed positive correlation between the two variables adopted.

One can point to the value of this study as strategic investments in space agencies to boost the filing of patents in a nation in the most diverse areas.

The establishment of partnerships between companies, government and universities aims to enhance innovation and the technological development of institutions. The biotechnology sector has grown in recent years mainly driven by its cooperative business model. Compared to other countries, this sector is slowly advancing in Brazil, with delays in science, technology and innovation, especially in the private sector. This paper aims to examine, through social network analysis, the collaborative networks between institutions that filed patents in biotechnology – medicinal preparations from plants – whose inventions had Brazil as the priority country.

The study of technological cooperation using patent documents is a reliable approach as they serve as good indicators of the interactions between organizations that focus on innovation and development of new product. Social network analysis of cooperation networks helps to understand the connections between patent assignees, and how they establish relationships.

Results show that public universities are the institutions that most deposit patents, as well as those that co-operate the most, especially Universidade of Campinas. The study also reveals the critical role of Research Support Agencies in stimulating research and technological development, which result in new technologies.

The study applied the social network analysis to provide an overview of the interactions among Brazilian institutions with the purpose of helping in decision-making and inciting public policies to leverage the biotechnology sector.

The purpose of this paper is to present the use of a free code computational tool, Patent2net, in the search of patents for the implementation of distance learning aimed at Continuing Medical Education.

This technical report is based on the extraction, organization and availability, in the format of graphs and dynamic tables, and also based on information in other patents on the subject, made available in the Espacenet database.

As a result, it was possible to identify a Chinese patent, free for reproduction in Brazil, which describes an e-learning system that simulates 3D scenarios for training nursing teams.

The paper has used one unique patent database, but containing more than 100m documents.

The selected patent can contribute to the improvement of care and behavioral techniques of the health professionals.

The training of health professionals can improve the public and supplementary health systems.

This is the first paper in that de technometric analisys of patents was used to solve a problem regarding the training of health professionals.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the relationship between patent applications and long-term risk for small firms across the global financial crisis of 2008. During a crisis, firm risk often skyrockets, and small and medium enterprises face significant dangers to their business continuity. However, managers have a set of strategies that could be implemented to increase a firm’s resilience, sustaining competitive advantages and improving access to financial resource. The authors focused on the investigating the impact of patenting activities on small business risk in a time of crisis.

This is a quantitative study based on a sample of Italian firms that applied for a patent in 2005. The changes in corporate credit ratings over a five-year period are related to different proxies of patent activity using multivariate regression analysis.

Firms that filed for a patent were more resilient, compared to the control sample, during the financial crisis. Innovative activities resulting in patent application seem to deliver strategic resources useful to tackle the crisis rather than increase riskiness. The moderating effect of patents on risk sensitivity is stronger for small firms and when the number of patents or the patent intensity is larger.

Limited evidence is available on how patent applications are related to risks for small firms during an economic crisis. The authors highlight that the innovative efforts resulting in patent applications can support small business resilience. The authors also point out that the implementation of patent information in small firms' credit score modeling is still an uncommon practice, while it is useful in estimating firm risk in a way more robust to exogenous credit shocks.

This paper aims to assess the comparative position of the national innovation system of Chinese state entrepreneurship versus liberal market entrepreneurship. Based on the comparative institutional framework, it asks whether Chinese state entrepreneurship has a comparative disadvantage because of its incoherent institutions in liberal or coordinated economies. Hence, does the Chinese institutional system of innovation lag behind that of US or liberal countries of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies in the transformation of national science into economic products measured as high-technology exports?

This study uses panel data analysis based on 29 OECD economies and the Chinese economy over 23 years. Regarding national science productivity (explorative capabilities), it includes published and patented science streams; regarding technological transformation (exploitative capabilities), it measures the percentage of high-technology exports in gross domestic product (GDP). The interactions between the types of entrepreneurship and national science institutions serve as predictors in the design.

The results show that Chinese state entrepreneurship has a comparative advantage over liberal economies in published science. However, Chinese state entrepreneurship has a comparative disadvantage compared to liberal entrepreneurship in patent science. Regarding the dyadic level of comparability between the national economies, there are mixed results in the transformation of national science.

This study supports the three following theoretical points: national institutions differ regardless of the pressure of convergence through globalization; national science contingencies influence different paths of the transformation of national science to technology; and mixed economies, such as state entrepreneurship, can achieve high performance without fully conforming to liberal markets.

This study emphasizes institutional mechanisms for future research to support the innovation of incoherent institutions and suggests the benefit of cross-pollination of senior managers between state and private organizations for a defined duration.

Theoretically, this research combines an interdisciplinary and interinstitutional level of analysis, and in so doing, it deals with the transformation of national science in scientific publications and patents in the vertical value chain. Empirically, this study links the national published and patented science with the national economic artifacts in high-technology sectors. This novel approach to assess the national and discipline-level interaction sets a context for the future research in other settings. It also informs policy decisions regarding the growth of science, innovation and development.

The level of R&D spending of a country tends to increase the national patent rate and, in consequence, can collaborate with its economic development. However, there are a few empirical studies investigating this phenomenon by comparing countries from all over the globe. The purpose of this paper is to disassemble the sources of R&D spending and identify the role of national patent applications as a mediator in the relationship between R&D spending and national development.

Panel data on patent applications in 35 countries of all continents (except Africa) over 15 years (from 1999 to 2013) regarding four levels of national R&D intensity (i.e. by enterprises, governments, higher education institutions and private non-profit organisations), gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, gross national income (GNI) and human development index (HDI) were collected from the OCDE. Then, two-stage panel regressions were conducted to test the hypotheses.

The empirical findings indicated that R&D spending from firms and higher education institutions (public and private) help to directly improve national patent applications, thus contributing to the national development (measured by GDP per capita, GNI per capita and HDI).

The importance of this study was to show that the investments in R&D made by universities and firms are more effective in leading to patent applications, which contributes to promoting national development. With these findings, governments can focus their efforts on stimulating these types of investments if they want to foster the growth of national patent rates.

This paper analyzes the importance given by venture capital (VC) firms to the different characteristics of the patent portfolio of a young innovative company (YIC). In an attempt to go beyond previous studies, the authors argue that not only is the size of a technological portfolio significant but also its nature. It is also examined whether the correlation between patents and VC financing varies across different industrial sectors and over different rounds of VC investments.

The empirical analysis has focused on a sample of 1,096 European YICs between the years 2010 and 2014. Target companies were identified in the monthly bulletins of Go4Venture, which reported the largest European deals and gathered information on the amount of VC financing. Additional data was derived from FinSMEs and crunchbase. Industrial sectors were differentiated according to their ability to appropriate the returns of innovation by relying on patent protection mechanisms. A multivariate regression framework at the patent family level was adopted to investigate empirical associations between the amount of VC financing and the characteristics of a YIC's patent portfolio.

The results confirm the positive value of patents. Both the size and the characteristics of a YIC patent portfolio have been found to be positively associated with the total amount of VC financing. Additionally, the correlation between a YIC patent portfolio and VC investment varies across industries and over rounds of funding. Although the number of patents is positively correlated with VC investments in sectors with strong Intellectual Property (IP) regimes, the same does not apply to sectors characterized by lower patent intensity, where qualitative metrics seem to have a stronger correlation. Significant differences have also been found for the different rounds of VC investments.

The limitations of this paper are related to data availability. Empirical associations have been investigated, but causal effects cannot be ascertained in this framework. The authors focused on a sample of firms that received VC funding. Several transactions were excluded, due to a lack of specifications pertaining to the round series. Furthermore, a number of potential drivers of the financed amounts, such as variables related to the founder or the management team, have not been considered in this study.

For firms operating in sectors with weak IP regimes, patents are positively associated with attracting equity capital, if they are the output of R&D collaborations and have higher technical merit. In industries where patent intensity is higher, patent portfolio size matters more than quality. This suggests that VC investors award innovation quality to cases in which patenting is less frequent. Since the results indicate that positive associations between patenting and VC financing are more significant in later stages, managers should plan their patenting strategy in advance to reap the related benefits, and then collect the premium at later VC stages.

In this paper, the importance given by VC firms to different characteristics of a YIC patent portfolio has been analyzed in terms of size, quality, and complexity. While previous empirical analyses mainly focused on a single sector, the authors have examined whether the relevance of patents for VC financing decisions varies across industries and over different rounds of investment. The geographical coverage of the sample is another novelty of the paper. Previous works focused on a limited number of countries, whereas this research has considered firms operating in several European countries.