Abstract

Patent statistics are currently one of the research areas being intensively explored. Patent activity, measured by the number of patents, is one of the recognized measures of creativity and innovation, not only among countries and regions but also business entities. Patent statistics include a rich and detailed description of the patent, not only in terms of its content. This description includes information about the inventors of the patent, as well as the International Patent Classification (IPC). A new chapter in the exploration of patent statistics is their use to assess the creative diversity of patent activity for men and women. This variation applies not only to the total number of patents. It is crucial to indicate the areas of science, technology and the economy in which different patent activity for men and women appears. Therefore, in this study two main research tasks were formulated: analysis of the differences in the dynamics of changes in creative patent activity of men and women and identification of the diversity of creative accumulation of patent activity for men and women for the entire study period 1999‒2103 in the countries under study: Germany, France, the UK, and Italy. In order to obtain uniform conditions for obtaining patent protection for the inventions of all inventors, the data source was the database European Patent Office (EPO).The diversity of accumulation of creative patent activity for men and women was achieved by using the IPC/NACE concordance table.

Key words: inventions and innovations, research and development, intellectual property, comparative analysis of countries

Introduction

Patent statistics is a diverse area of research exploration. In the literature, it is seen as a measure of: innovation (Griliches, 1990; OECD, 2005; Wisła, 2014; European Union, 2014), competition, specialization (RIS3 Guide, 2012), creativity (Fischer and Varga, 2003), intellectual property, effects created by the outlays on research and development (R&D), and the level of technological advancement of countries, regions and individual traders. Patent activity is also recognized as a component of innovation potential. It can also serve as a measure of the creative involvement of women and men in building countries’ innovative potential. In this study two research tasks were formulated: the first is to analyze the differences in the dynamics of changes in creative patent activity of men and women in selected countries.