Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting

Michael  Webb; Nick  Short; Nicholas  Bloom; Josh   Lerner

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting

by Michael Webb, Nick Short, Nicholas Bloom and Josh Lerner

Abstract

Patenting in software, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence has grown rapidly in recent years. Such patents are acquired primarily by large U.S. technology firms such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, and HP, as well as by Japanese multinationals such as Sony, Canon, and Fujitsu. Chinese patenting in the U.S. is small but growing rapidly and world-leading for drone technology. Patenting in machine learning has seen exponential growth since 2010, although patenting in neural networks saw a strong burst of activity in the 1990s that has only recently been surpassed. In all technological fields, the number of patents per inventor has declined near-monotonically, except for large increases in inventor productivity in software and semiconductors in the late 1990s. In most high-tech fields, Japan is the only country outside the U.S. with significant U.S. patenting activity; however, whereas Japan played an important role in the burst of neural network patenting in the 1990s, it has not been involved in the current acceleration. Comparing the periods 1970–89 and 2000–15, patenting in the current period has been primarily by entrant assignees, with the exception of neural networks.

Keywords: Patents; Software; Technological Innovation; United States;

Language: English

Format: Print

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Citation:

Webb, Michael, Nick Short, Nicholas Bloom, and Josh Lerner. "Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-014, August 2018. (NBER Working Paper Series, No. 24793, July 2018.)

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Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting

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