7/2/17: There's Zero Growth in Irish Patentable Innovation & Research Outputs

In a recent post on Irish patents filings and applications with the EPO, I showed that:

1. Irish R&D and innovation performance - as reflected by patents data - is hardly impressive, with the country ranking 14th in the sample of 50 countries as an origin for EPO Applications;
2. There has been no material improvement in Irish standing in the data in recent years, compared to trends.

Some of the readers have taken me to task on the second point, despite the fact that my evidence (based on EPO data) shows no gains in Irish patenting activities with the EPO in terms of both applications and filings, and in comparative terms as a share of both in the total number of EPO applications and filings. 

So I took a different exercise, plotting a relationship between average levels of filings and applications (combined) across 2006-2008 period against the same for 2014-2015 data. 

Not surprisingly, Ireland comes smack in the middle of the distribution and right on the regression line, implying that:

1. Ireland's patenting performance is to the upper range of the overall distribution of 50 countries, but it is at the bottom of this sub-group of top performing countries. In fact, Ireland's position is statistically indistinguishable from 'mediocre' or 'average' group of countries. 
2. Ireland shows only tiny growth in applications between 2006-2008 period into 2014-2015 period (see Ireland's point position just slightly above 45 degree line), which is statistically indifferent from zero growth.
3. Once we control for the factors that drive global trend in patents (blue regression line), Ireland shows no statistically identifiable growth (Ireland's point is bang on the regression line).

Yes, patents are not the only measure of innovation and R&D, but, being the core part of STEM-focused research, they are the main measure of innovation and R&D, because patents data omits only one form of innovation - that linked to software. Now, software innovation is important, and Ireland may or may not be doing well in this sub-sector, but STEM research is based not on software innovations, but on 'hard' patents. And Ireland does not brand itself as 'Software-only Innovation Hub'. In fact, Ireland spends (as a State and economy) more on STEM innovation than on software innovation, so the key focus on Irish policies is, once again, measurable via patents.

Until we get 2016 data to update the above analysis, I rest this topic discussion.