Patenting
Abroad: An Application of Network Analysis
Abstract
The aim of this
paper is to examine the behavior of patenting abroad using social network
analysis on the patent data for 192 countries in the period 1995-2009. We
estimate the metrics of the international patenting network for the years 1995,
2000, 2005 and 2009 in order to recognize and possible evolution of the
network. Our findings indicate that in the fifteen years period the
international patenting network evolved with increasing number of connections,
increasing weights and became more connected. The estimated metrics of the
network verified the previous findings of the literature that the countries
which exhibit high innovative activity attract patents from abroad. Also, the
estimated preferential attachment indicator suggests that the probability of
patenting a new patent in a foreign country is highly correlated with the
authority index.
Keywords: International
patenting, Social network analysis.
