Cross-border digital marine innovation from China: collaboration expansion, network differentiation, and technological integration

Introduction Digital marine innovation increasingly depends on collaboration across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. The policy challenge is to connect joint invention with cooperation and sustained use in marine operations. Patent studies capture inventive output and collaborative ties, but patent growth alone cannot distinguish repeated activity within established relationships from wider network reach or stronger technological embedding. Methods This study addresses this gap by examining collaboration scale, network position and technological embedding in China-related cross-border digital marine innovation using patent records for 38 partner country labels from 2015 to 2024 with country and year fixed effects. Results The collaboration network expanded over the period, but prior collaboration scale had little association with subsequent relative network position. The positive diversity output association fell within the benchmark generated for portfolios with the same number of patents. Under allocation weighting, diversity was positively associated with combinations of fields within patents, but the result was sensitive to sample composition, and output volume showed no positive association with embedding. Discussion These findings shift attention from collaborative output to conditions supporting continued use of jointly developed technologies in marine services. Project agreements should define the marine function and involve receiving organizations in setting operational requirements and accepting the technology. Support should cover continued operation, and data arrangements should keep information usable for the intended task. Partnership assessment should recognize the operational contribution of service providers alongside patent ownership. These provisions connect innovation support to implementation and give cross-border participation a practical basis in marine service delivery.