International Patent Statistics, Methodology, and Analyses

Organization For Economic Cooperation & Development, Paris Cedex 16 ILE-DE-FRANCE

Investigators

Abstract

The demand for patent-based indicators has been growing steadily over the past decades, both for macro and micro-economic analysis as well as for policy use, as reflected in national S&T statistical publications like the NSF's Science and Engineering Indicators and the European Commission's Report on European S&T Indicators. To address a lack of a common database designed to construct internationally comparable patent indicators, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will conduct a project that will construct a database and supporting methodology that will be accessible to Member governments. This work consists of three broad modules: constructing the database, developing an internationally agreed upon methodology and organizing a workshop where a variety of users, data providers, and analysts can contribute to the project. Major output of the project are: (1) a database available to all participants in the project, regularly updated; (2) guidelines for calculating indicators: published as working papers, they will feed into a revised version of the OECD Patents manual; (3) indicators published on a regular basis by the OECD and made available to institutions such as the NSF in OECD member countries; (4) an international workshop in 2002 on patents indicators, with participation of experts from the institutions supporting the project; and (5) a compendium of patent statistics published in 2002, collecting new indicators, an analysis of technological trends drawn from these indicators, and methodological explanations.