Abstract
This study seeks to shed new light on the complex
relationship between patents and innovations that has
remained extremely elusive thus far. The objective of the
study is to contribute to our understanding of which
innovations are patented-and which are not-by analyzing
the patenting decision for circa 800 Finnish innovations.
The data is drawn from the Sfinno database compiled at
VTT Innovation Studies. With the help of econometric
methods, the study seeks to shed new light on the
question of how the propensity to patent an innovation is
affected by the characteristics of the innovation, the
market, and the innovating firm.
The results should be of obvious interest to those who
depend on patent data in drawing conclusions about
innovation and technological change. The finding that
larger, i.e. more novel and significant, product
innovations are patented more frequently than smaller
ones should be comforting news from the perspective of
using patents as an economic indicator of innovation
since it implies that large innovations enter the patent
indicator at a relatively high probability. However, the
study also points to the weaknesses of patent data by
demonstrating that the propensity to patent varies
significantly across firms and technologies. For
instance, the evidence in favor of the hypotheses on the
presence of economies of scale in the patenting activity
and on the relatively high propensities to patent in
start-up ventures suggests that patents are a rather
problematic measure of innovations in the context of
testing the Schumpeterian hypotheses.
Original language | English |
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Place of Publication | Espoo |
Publisher | VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland |
Number of pages | 118 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-951-38-7030-0 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-951-38-7029-4 |
Publication status | Published - 2007 |
MoE publication type | C1 Separate scientific books |
Publication series
Series | VTT Publications |
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Number | 646 |
ISSN | 1235-0621 |
Keywords
- patents
- innovations
- patenting
- econometric analysis
- propensity
- models
- estimation
- testing
- Sfinno
- product innovations
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SFINNO® - Database of Finnish Innovations
Vainikainen, S. (Administrator), Rilla, N. (Administrator), Oksanen, J. (Administrator) & Hajikhani, A. (Administrator)
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