Technology development in Latin America and the Caribbean: an evaluation of the process in Brazil using patent data.

In this paper we take a look at the process of technology development in Latin America and the Caribbean using the surrogate measure of US patents granted as a tangible, quantified and recorded output of the technology development process. Our data include all the US patents granted between 1991-2008, in which at least one inventor was a resident of the country studied. We first compared the growth of patents developed in the top 10 economies in Latin America and the Caribbean with those of the top 10 economies of Asia. As expected, in terms of technology development, we observed wide variation among the countries in each of the two regions. We also observed the rapid growth exhibited by the Asian as opposed to the Latin American and Caribbean countries. We then investigated in detail the nature of technological development followed by Brazil in the South American region by studying: a) the category of the patent - utility or design; b) the ownership of the patents; c) the technology trajectory the patent belongs to; d) organisational status of the assignee, whether individual, corporate or an institute; e) residence status of the team of inventors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]