International patenting: An application of network analysis

The aim of this paper is to examine the behavior of patenting abroad using social network analysis on the patent data for 192 countries in the period 1995-2009. We estimate the metrics of the international patenting network for the years 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2009 in order to recognize and possible evolution of the network. Our findings indicate that in the fifteen years period the international patenting network evolved with increasing number of connections, increasing weights and became more connected. The estimated metrics of the network verified the previous findings of the literature that the countries which exhibit high innovative activity attract patents from abroad. Also, the estimated preferential attachment indicator suggests that the probability of patenting a new patent in a foreign country is highly correlated with the authority index.