Canadian patent profile: Some explorations in patent statistics

• Canadian patenting, both domestic and worldwide, analysed and compared.
• Implications of the results for assessment of innovation in Canada discussed.
• Canadian patent system is not seen an impediment to innovation by most businesses.
• However, Canadian patenting is at a lower level than in many other countries.
• Canadian public institutions show relatively strong patenting activity.

The aim of this paper is to present the patent profile of Canada and Canadian inventors. Different measures of patent statistics have been used to compare Canada's profile with that of other countries. Also, the patent intensity of technologies and industries has been presented. Comparing Canada's patent profile with that of other countries using different patent statistics suggests that Canadian companies do not utilize patents as much as their counterparts in other industrialized countries. This is despite the fact that IP protection in Canada is not an obstacle to innovation according to the surveys of Canadian innovative companies.