This chapter presents some preliminary evidence about the way both mining firms and suppliers innovate in Chile and whether (and, if yes, how) they protect their innovations. It includes semi-structured interviews with senior executives at a sample of Chilean mining firms, mining, equipment, technology and services (METS) and universities. This analysis is complemented with information coming from an online survey applied to 300 Chilean METS. Finally, a group of twenty lawyers specializing in intellectual property was surveyed to provide their opinions regarding: the role of IP in the mining sector, the likely benefits of the introduction of a patent box mechanism in the Chilean legislation, and the role the Chilean IP Office (INAPI) is playing in this area. Interviews with INAPI’s senior staff members also present the policies implemented over the last years in order to promote the use of IP instruments in the mining sector.

Mining products are essential in our lives. We need them to satisfy our everyday needs. The growing worldwide population, together with rising living standards, pushes up the demand for minerals. The mining industry faces continuous challenges to meet such demand and to fulfil the sustainability requirements imposed by the policy makers. Innovation is a key instrument to address these challenges. This chapter describes the mining industry and its major economic characteristics, discusses the role of innovation in the industry and the environment in which it takes place, and summarizes some of the major findings that emerge from the subsequent chapters in the book.

This chapter looks at transport innovation in the mining sector between 1990 and 2016. Shipping the mining output is an expensive and in most cases an unavoidable component of the mining process. The importance of transport, in the logistics chain of getting raw materials to final users/consumers, increases over time. This triggers the need to innovate in the transport sector, which leads to making mining locations that were more remote, accessible. This chapter uses patent data to explore transport innovations in mining, both within the mining area and outside, in the form of haulage to destination. It explores all relevant modes of transport for mining sector, namely road, rail, conveyers and maritime. Through patent citation analysis, the chapter shows that most innovation originates from the transport sector and is then adopted into the mining sector.

This chapter examines the relationship between the mining sector and environmental regulation, particularly whether stricter national environmental policies lead to increased environmental innovation in the mining sector, and whether higher stringency harms overall mining sector productivity. These hypotheses are tested using a panel dataset of 31 countries over 1990–2015, combining measures of EPS recently developed by the OECD, OECD data on mining sector productivity, and WIPO mining environmental patent-filing data. The chapter provides an overview of the mining sector’s relationship with the environment, environmental consequences of the extraction of the most economically important and prevalent minerals, and an overview of environmental regulation in each country, including mining-sector-specific regulations and more general environmental regulations, and mining environmental paten- filing patterns. The literature surrounding country-level environmental patent filing and the (weak) Porter hypothesis is reviewed, followed by a description of the dataset, its construction, and summary statistics, and results of the central regression analyses.

This chapter analyzes the recent evolution of innovation in the mining sector. It characterizes the mining innovation global ecosystem by looking at the technologies, countries and stakeholders contributing to technological change in the sector. It provides a detailed description of private stakeholders, such as mining companies and mining equipment, technology and service firms (METS), and public ones such as universities and governmental institutions. The chapter brings together aggregated innovation data with a novel unit-record database containing comprehensive patent and firm level data for the mining sector from 1900 to 2016.

This chapter analyses how innovation in the mining sector responds to changes in commodity prices. For this purpose, the chapter combines commodity prices data with innovation data as captured by patent filings extracted from the WIPO database. Patents registered by both mining companies and mining equipment, technology and service firms (METS) are included. Findings from a multi-country panel analysis show that innovation in the mining sector is cyclical: it increases in periods of high commodity prices while decreasing during commodity price recessions. Innovations react more to long price-cycle variations if compared to shorter ones. METS seems the driving force of this mechanism. Mining countries, as opposed to METS ones, are found to be slower in reacting to price changes.

This chapter aims to broaden the scope of innovation in the mining sector, with a focus on emerging countries, based on Latin American countries. Current innovation can foster growth of many countries endowed with natural resource in new ways that were not considered in the past. Mining cannot become a true engine of growth for the whole economy unless linkages within the sector and beyond – following the logic of a value chain and systems of innovation – are strengthened and deepened. This requires processes of diffusion, adoption and adaptation of innovation and technology. This chapter describes mining global value chains, national innovation systems and their role in the development of the mining sector. It also discusses some policy implications for emerging countries rich in natural resources.

Canada is one of the largest mining nations in the world, ranking among the top five countries in the global production of thirteen major minerals. Despite the economic strength of the sector, R&D, innovation, and commercialization remain challenges for the Canadian mining sector. With increasing environmental standards and regulations, companies operating in this sector are continually searching for technological solutions to advance sustainable mining. Patent data is an excellent starting point for understanding these innovative efforts as the information contained in patents reveals the specific technical knowledge embedded in the invention. This detailed information reveals who is patenting and what they are patenting, allowing for the identification of collaboration opportunities while avoiding costly duplicative research. The chapter provides a lens into the patenting effort in the Canadian mining sector, including trends, landscape maps and collaboration and is the result of a collaborative effort between the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO).

The chapter describes the Brazilian mining sector, focusing on its competitive dynamics, strategic challenges and technological needs, as well as institutional arrangements to promote innovation. It aims at identifying how mining firms and mining, equipment, technology and services (METS) firms deal with innovation protection and technology transfer in Brazil. The primary sample includes resident and non-resident companies. The chapter covers the key technological areas of mining patenting in Brazil, as well as the main stakeholders of those patents. Through import contracts, technology transfer among firms and with other stakeholders of the mining industry, mainly universities, is reviewed, and the role of foreign METS is highlighted in this process. The chapter also presents as a case study the bigger Brazilian mining enterprise: Vale S.A. The focus is on Vale’s strategies to mitigate external challenges and to face technological needs through innovation.

Mineral mining is among the most dangerous jobs in the world. According to the ILO, mining accounted for about 8 percent of the world’s work-related fatalities in 2015 but only represents 1 percent of the global workforce. Despite these dangers, the long-run trend in the USA shows a significant decline in mine-related fatalities. This reflects positive changes in a number of factors, but technological innovations are likely to be one of the most important sources of improvements in health and safety outcomes at US mining operations. This chapter explores technological innovations in mineral mining health and safety, using patent data by describing the broad trends in US mineral mining patents as well as the subgroup related to health and safety. The chapter also provides an overview of the development of US mining legislation culminating with the passage of the US MINER Act of 2006 and describes this program and the patented technological innovations associated with federally supported research through the program. The final section performs descriptive regression analyses to relate the innovations stimulated by the program to health and safety outcomes in mineral mining.

It is hard to overstate the significance of the mining industry’s contribution to the Australian economy but the narrative around mining is generally not focused on the technology, innovation or intellectual property that drives the industry today. This chapter aims to perform an investigation of the mining sector using patents to determine innovation trends and who is undertaking this work: the operating miners, publicly funded entities or the mining, equipment, technology and services (METS) firms? This chapter uses Australian firm-level data in combination with the patent database developed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to detail the patent-filing activity and innovation areas in the mining sector. The ultimate aim is to determine whether Australians are innovators in the field, creating and exporting technology, or if Australian miners simply use other companies’ tools and innovations to dig their resources out of the ground.