Still following up on my previous post titled "European Commission officials claim there’s an ‘unhealthy obsession with patents’", (linked above) where I commented on a Business Insider article arguing that European innovators would do better to prioritize value creation over the mere protection of intellectual property, it seems particularly timely to highlight the findings of a recent study published in the journal Scientometrics.
By analyzing an extensive dataset of 4,460 Swedish innovations spanning several decades, the study reveals a striking and somewhat unsettling reality: the vast majority of these innovations were never patented at all. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-025-05406-y Even when patents were indeed filed, they captured only around 15% of the genuine innovation signal, leaving an overwhelming 85% informational void—a veritable black hole of knowledge that patents fail to convey. This stark discrepancy highlights that relying exclusively on patents provides a distorted and incomplete picture of innovation, underscoring the urgent need for richer, multidimensional approaches to more accurately measure, understand, and ultimately stimulate technological and creative progress.
PS - As reported in The Economist, the majority of international patents are either insignificant or never commercially exploited https://pachecotorgal.com/2022/08/31/the-economist-the-inventors-whose-patents-are-worth-billions/ What the article in The Economist didn’t address—and what few seem to know—is the answer to the question I raised in the post that initiated this discussion: "among the vast multitude of patents granted thus far, how many share the same dubious “quality” as those associated with Theranos?
Update after 24 hours: The post’s top three foreign readers come from Russia, Singapore, and the US.
