Intellectual Property Statistics

Patents and other intellectual property (IP) rights are increasingly part of cross-border trade in their own rights. Patent transfers and patent licensing between inventors, investors and innovators create new business strategies of cooperation in the creation of new technology – increasing the productivity in the stock of technology assets – and efficient “distribution” of these rights. The rights bundles are then used – also increasingly – in products and services being traded cross-border, furthering economic efficiency created by this cooperative strategy. Today’s international trade statistics, however, lack statistics explicitly on trade flows from ideas, based on IP rights.  This book offers an idea based statistical framework to measure IP, (i.e., increasingly depends on trade in ideas) and explores ways to introduce the framework into international standards. Specifically, it offers a theory of value to measure the flows from IP and an asset view of IP to deal with allocation of resources and who owns these rights. This is then contrasted with the current way IP is treated and a “gap analysis” is used to identify what needs to change in the standards. This new framework can help develop theories, policies, practices and inform the decisions needed to better leverage the human capital formation of inventors everywhere.

Praise for Intellectual Property Statistics…

 “In this book, Prof. Ullberg has undertaken a Herculean task – to lay out a paradigm for the collection of IP Statistics to ensure that the … market of trade in ideas has the information and data necessary to function well.

[the] volume should be viewed as a starting point, a work in progress, but an important one that could very well influence the development of this important set of data on trade in ideas.

At a time when global issues … require both new ideas and the spread of those ideas widely to help ensureboth economic growth and continued global economic convergence data that helps us monitor and evaluate what is happening in trade in ideas will be extremely valuable.”

–       Robert Koopman, American University, Washington, DC, USA and

Former Chief Economist, World Trade Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

Eskil Ullberg is Adjunct Professor of Economics at George Mason University (Fairfax, Virginia, USA) and Director of the Trade in Ideas Program hosted at the Institute for Management of Innovation and Technology (Sweden). His research interest is on markets in patents, and how they leverage the human capital formation, especially for developing countries, through exchange in human ideas leading to specialization in patented technology and thereby to gains in the global stock of technology. He has published books, articles and policy speeches on the subject including markets in patents (IP) as a new economic development policy emphasising the importance of institutional arrangements, and management of risk and uncertainty through IP strategy. This new economic development policy was evaluated in a pilot-study with five+ developing countries in 2017-2019 with the purpose of informing a policy discussion on trade in ideas (IP). Prof. Ullberg is a pioneer in experimental studies of markets in patents and is active in the patent market and cross-border trade discussions with Members of and the institutions of the United Nations, the European Commission and the World Trade Organization.