Patents and R&D personnel - Issue number 107/2008 - Products Statistics in Focus

This publication aims to analyse the relationship between patent activity and R&D personnel. Although many Member States fit the correlation, the relationship between patents and R&D personnel does not appear to be straightforward in all of them. Moreover, the evolution of patent activity does not necessarily follow that of R&D personnel. As the countries presented in this publication vary in terms of economic size and innovative structure, the analysis should accordingly take these aspects into consideration. A breakdown by institutional sector reveals that patent activity is concentrated in the Business enterprise sector (BES), whereas similar shares of R&D personnel are employed in the BES and the Higher education sector. A significant number of R&D personnel are also employed in the Government sector. The last part of the publication considers the role of researchers and compares those working in the BES to those employed in all economic sectors. This analysis reveals a number of interesting differences between countries.