Harnessing intellectual property for development: Opportunities and challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean

The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) face complex development challenges, characterised by a low capacity for growth and structural productivity gaps (ECLAC, 2024a; ECLAC, 2025). Addressing this productivity imperative through productive development policy aimed at diversification, technological sophistication and positive structural change is central to the region’s economic agenda and critical for tapping regional potential for innovation, sustainable and productive development. The manufacturing sector occupies a central place in this process due to its historically demonstrated role as a locus for dynamic increasing returns, capability-building, technological diffusion and dense intersectoral linkages. Although the region has experienced shifts in its productive structure over the past half century – notably a decline in manufacturing value added as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) – manufacturing remains a critical engine for sustained economic catch-up and the development of industries capable of competing in international value chains. In a region where research and development (R&D) invest- ment remains comparatively low and is financed primarily by the public sector and executed in academia, intellectual property rights (IPR) can support innovation and bring new technologies to the market, especially when complementary capabilities are in place. Because almost all patent applications filed in the LAC region target the manufacturing sector, patenting activity provides a reliable signal of both domestic technological capabilities and cross-border know- ledge flows. While IP matters across the wider economy, this study focuses on manufacturing because it covers most patenting activity in LAC and offers the most comparable cross-country data on employment, value added, wages and trade. By examining how patents and trade marks are distributed across manufacturing industries, this study connects IP utilisation directly with core economic outcomes, including employment, value added, wages and trade performance. Ultimately, applying a patent lens clarifies the distinction between local innovation, foreign technological presence and the region’s position in global networks, identifying the region’s underlying potential for innovation and technology-led development. Recognising the need to co-ordinate productive development policy and innovation policy, the European Patent Office (EPO), with its specialised knowledge of patent data and analytics, and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), with expertise in regional macroeconomic and productive development policies, have partnered to investigate and provide evidence on the role of IPR in the region’s economic development. Drawing on a novel and comprehensive range of IP and economic data collected and merged across nine different countries, this study assesses the economic impact of manufacturing industries and their exposure to innovation and IP. It offers evidence at country and regional levels, making it possible to derive relevant policy insights at the same level while also comparing specific national patterns against the regional benchmark.