Performance of ICT R&D

This report provides evidence on the inventive output of ICT R&D activity in the EU, the US and other regions and proposes an economic modelling framework for analysing the impact of the R&D processes. It uses patent statistics as a measure of output of the R&D process. According to the presented evidence, the annual number of ICT priority patent applications steadily increased in the period from the early 90s until 2001, and, since the burst of the dot.com bubble, it has remained stable. This pattern can be observed for both the EU and the US, though the US absolute values are about twice the EU ones. Since the early 90s, the annual number of Asian (excluding Japan) ICT priority patent applications strongly increased due to two countries: South Korea and China.