We analyze inventions in green energy technologies over the period 2005-2017. We use a novel dataset, making use of the IPC Green Inventory of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to analyze four broad categories of green energy technologies including alternative energy production technologies, energy conservation technologies, and green transportation. We use these data to look at how patent families and PCT international patent applications have evolved in this field in recent years. We find that energy innovation-related patenting has first expanded exponentially up until 2013, both in terms of the total number of patent families and PCT international patent applications in green energy technologies. Yet this period of accelerated growth in the number of published green energy patents has been followed by a period of deceleration—even a slow decline. Although most green energy technologies have seen a downward trend in the annual number of patents published since 2012, the decline has been most pronounced in nuclear power generation technologies and alternative energy production technologies. The latter notably include renewable energy technologies, such as solar and wind energy, and fuel cells. In contrast, patents in energy conservation technologies and green transportation technologies have continued to grow, but at a slower pace.

Automotive industry is going through a technological shock. Multiple intertwined technological advances (autonomous vehicle, connect vehicles and mobility-as-a-Service) are creating new rules for an industry that had not changed its way of doing business for almost a century. Key players from the tech and traditional automobile sectors – although with different incentives – are pooling resources to realize the goal of self-driving cars. AV innovation by auto and tech companies’ innovation is still largely home based, however, there is some shifting geography at the margin. AV and other related technologies are broadening the automotive innovation landscape, with several IT-focused hotspots – which traditionally were not at the center of automotive innovation – gaining prominence.

Traditionally, the mining sector has been considered a slow innovator compared to other industries, like the manufacturing or pharmaceutical industries. However, we observe an upsurge in the innovation activity of the mining industry in the first half of the 2000s. During this period, mining innovation started to increase rapidly after periods of stagnation and downward trends. To conduct and in-depth investigation of the global trends and patterns behind this structural change in mining innovation, we formulated a general search strategy to identify patent activity in this sector. The strategy is repeatable over time and in multiple databases. It enabled us to produce a dataset of patents in mining and mining-related technologies. Using this newly-created database we identified at the basis of the structural change a switch away from refining technologies into exploration and environmental technologies probably explained by the took over of the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution. The types of actors active in the mining innovation also changed across time: there are now many more individuals, research centers and universities innovating in mining and relatively less companies. Finally, the country composition in the pool of mining innovation activity has radically changed with the appearance of China on the global scene starting from early 2000.

This brochure explains how the IPC Green Inventory can give direct access to the latest patent information about technologies in a number of fields including alternative energy production, energy conservation, transportation, waste management, and agriculture and forestry

This paper has two objectives. First, it describes a new database mapping migratory patterns of inventors, extracted from information included in patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. It explains in detail the information contained in the database and discusses the usefulness and reliability of the underlying data. Second, the paper provides a descriptive overview of inventor migration patterns, based on the information contained in the newly constructed database.

In this paper, the authors describe and explore a new algorithmic approach to constructing concordances between the International Patent Classification (IPC) system and industry classification systems that organize economic data. This ‘Algorithmic Links with Probabilities’ (ALP) approach incorporates text analysis software and keyword extraction programs and applies them to a comprehensive patent dataset. The authors conclude with a discussion on some of the possible applications of the concordance and provide a sample analysis that uses their preferred ALP concordance to analyze international patent flows based on trade patterns.

There is a growing interest in broadening the measurement scope of innovation and considering “creative” activities, meaning that the usual indicators of innovation satisfy neither scholars nor policy makers. Conceptually, there is not much difference between innovative and creative activity: but to what extent are current measures that capture innovation relevant for creativity? Can the new measures for creativity benefit from the experience accumulated through R&D and innovation? Our article provides insights and lessons learned from using measures of innovative activities for scholars who are interested in capturing creative activities. We underscore the difficulties faced when measuring innovation and draw some parallels of these difficulties with the efforts undertaken to measure creativity.