Evidence of the use and licensing of patents in Spain: a comparative analysis

Innovative companies are increasingly dependent on external sources of knowledge to complement or replace internal research. For this reason, companies have a constant demand for reliable data on technology transfer. Nevertheless, technology markets are an area that has received little attention due to the difficulty of obtaining information on private contracts, such as patent licensing agreements. To overcome the lack of official statistics on patent licensing and sales, in 2008 a first survey on patent use and licensing in Spain was carried out following the guidelines set by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The objective set out in this study has been to empirically verify whether this situation has improved in Spain 10 years after the application of said survey. The results obtained show that there have been no particularly relevant changes in the use of patents by Spanish companies in the period 2008-2018, and a set of technology policy recommendations are made.