Top innovation EU member states based on European patenting: Politicians, academia and AI got it wrong?

Abstract

Research background: The global highly competitive society depends upon innovations. The investment in research and development (R&D) should support endeavors leading to inventions to be protected by patents and to become innovations. The EU is aware about it and wants 3% of GDP to go into R&D (GERD Index) in order to reach competitiveness based on innovations protected by European patents (EPs).

Purpose of the article: Politicians, academia and Artificial Intelligence (AI) believe that the GERD Index and the absolute and relative number of EPs are the key criteria to select top innovation EU member states. The purpose of this article is to verify it.

Methods: The Eurostat, World Bank, and WIPO data for 2014–2023 is double checked. Conventional criteria to select top innovation EU member states based on EPs and endorsed by AI (GERD Index, EPs) are employed along with newly proposed criteria reflecting longitudinal trends in applications and granted EPs within the three-year cycle, their cost and success rate.

Findings & value added: A deeper understanding of inventing-patenting dynamics reveals that the innovation leadership based on EPs should consider conventional investing and patenting factors as well as other factors and their trends. Conventional criteria lead AI to point to Germany and Sweden, but the newly proposed factors and their criteria show that the innovation leadership based on EP is much more complex and that the GERD Index and EPs trends, the distinction of EP applications v granted EPs, their concentration factor and their cost factor points to Sweden and Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands and their success rate to Italy, while Austria, Belgium, and Germany are some ways back. The qualitative consistency, focus, determination and lean efficiency might be even more important than the quantitative country size, GDP and GERD.

Keywords

AI, European patent, GERD Index, innovations

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