基于专利视角的中国技术前沿追赶研究

China's Technology Catch-up in the Perspective of Patenting

较之生产率的方法,专利能够更好地反映一个国家的技术前沿。采用Python程序从美国专利商标局(USPTO)获取了600多万条专利数据,运用专利质量-数量的复合度量方法,构建总前向引用指标,测算中国对7个主要发达经济体的技术追赶程度,以及中国在关键技术领域的相对位置。研究发现:①2005—2017年中国USPTO授权专利数量激增,到2017年已超过英国、法国和中国台湾地区,与韩国和德国的数量差距大幅缩减至不到一半。但是,由于中国专利的3年平均前向引用不断下降,大大削弱中国将专利增加转化为技术追赶的能力。②在关键技术如ICT、半导体和光学领域,中国的专利数量超过中国台湾地区、德国、英国和法国,但较低的前向引用削弱了其在数量增长方面的优势,从而削弱了中国缩小与其他经济体关键技术差距的能力。最后利用WIPO/PCT数据进行稳健性分析,对国家技术进步排名进行调整和讨论。

Comparing with the productivity measure,patenting can better evaluate a country's technology frontier.With more than 6 million patent records from USPTO,this paper formulates a composite quality-quantity measure of patenting,i.e.,total forward citations which is used to evaluate the extent of China's overall technology catch-up with respect to seven economies,as well as China's relative position in relation to certain key technologies.Several results stand out.First,overall,China has registered a dramatic surge in USPTO-granted patents from 2005 to 2017.By 2017,China'surpassed the U.K.,France and China's Taiwan in total patent count,while substantially narrowing the count with S.Korea and Germany to less than half.However,the decline in China's 3-year forward citations count per patent has substantially impaired China's ability to translate its patent surge into technology frontier catch-up.Second,in certain key technologies including ICT,semi-conductors and optics,China's patent count has grown to exceed those of China's Taiwan,Germany,the U.K.and France,China's uniformly low cumulative forward citation counts reverses its quantity gains thereby impairing China's ability to narrow its gap in key technologies.The paper conducts the robustness test to discuss the possible adjustments of the ranking of economies technological capacity by using WIPO/PCT data.