A Green Light for Red Patents?
Evidence from Soviet Experiments with the Market and Invention, 1959 to 1991
Lisa D. Cook
Michigan State University
[email protected]
August 2012
The author wishes to thank Jeff Biddle, Maksym Ivanyna, Trevon Logan, Steve Nafziger, Roald
Sagdeev, and Judy Thornton for insightful comments and Susan Linz, Norman Graham, Ilya Segal,
Sergei Severinov, and seminar participants at Harvard, NBER, Michigan State University, Moscow
State University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the Economic History
Association Meeting for helpful discussions. She also wishes to thank Sungsam Chung,
Chaleampong Kongcharoen, Mikhail Kaverin, and Denis Usalev for excellent research assistance
and gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Economic History Association and the
Center for European and Russian and Eurasian Studies at Michigan State University.
ABSTRACT
Can robust inventive activity exist without patent rights? Throughout the postwar period, Soviet
policymakers attempted to increase inventor effort, and therefore inventive output, without patents
but with various market-like incentives. This first systematic analysis of data on Soviet inventors’
domestic and foreign inventive activity between 1959 and 1991 shows that domestic inventive
activity increased over time and was higher in the U.S.S.R. than in the U.S. Surprisingly, patent
flows from the Soviet Union to the rest of the world were substantial. Further, the evidence
suggests that Soviet incentives to increase individual initiative were effective, especially for foreign
inventive activity.
2
Can robust inventive activity exist without patent rights? Market economies with patents would be
inappropriate laboratories in which to test such a theory. Socialist economies, like that of the Soviet
Union, offer such a laboratory, since they did not extend rights protecting patents to their inventors,
which are considered a traditional motive to invent.
Experiments to introduce market-oriented incentives in the Soviet socialist economy are widely
associated with either end of the Soviet era – Lenin’s New Economic Policy and Gorbachev’s
perestroika.
The slowdown in technological advancement outside the defense sector elicited great
concern among post-war Soviet scholars and policymakers.1 In response, planners sought to create
incentives that would raise the inventive and innovative activity of individual inventors to address
the paucity of new ideas that could raise living standards throughout the economy. There were
several experiments to promote individual effort and achievement to raise Soviet living standards
throughout post-WWII Soviet history. Their success, however, has not been subject to empirical
investigation.
Soviet policymakers faced a fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, they could not extend patent
rights, traditionally considered an incentive for invention, to Soviet inventors due to socialism’s
constraints on private property. On the other hand, they needed to design policies that would
increase individual effort and inventive output. Researchers were broadly aware that these marketoriented policies existed in the post-war Soviet Union, e.g., Grossman (1966, 1977), Berliner (1976),
and Amman and Cooper (1986). Scholars also had piecemeal evidence that some inventive activity
1
The Soviet-Western technological gap which was analyzed by Freeman and Young (1965), Boretsky (1966), Gomulka
(1971, 1986), Cave (1980), Bergson (1987), Cooper (1984), and Judy and Clough (1990), among others.
3
was taking place in the Soviet Union but had a limited sense of its overall magnitude.2 Relying on
interviews and analysis of certain sectors, researchers, such as Thornton (1988), Linz (1992), and
Harrison (2005), and others formed a consensus in concluding that such policy experiments related
to invention and innovation were ineffective.
The case for the ineffective nature of these policies, however, rests on an empirical base that is
remarkably sparse by modern standards. Scholars could neither directly address the question of how
much total activity occurred nor whether the market-oriented policies worked. In short, scholars
have been unable to assess the extent of Soviet inventive activity, because they have had no direct
measure of it. To overcome this barrier and address these questions, I constructed a novel data set.
These data are largely unknown in the literature and have never been collected in a systematic
fashion. From the U.S. data we observe that these patents increased over time and that they grew to
be as large as the number of patent grants to inventors in other industrialized countries, such as
Australia, Austria, and Belgium. Simultaneously, from historical data collected from the U.S. and
other patent offices, we also find that foreign patent activity by Soviet residents not only existed but
was widespread geographically. The fact that there were significant technological flows from the
Soviet Union to the rest of the world, especially to the U.S., is remarkable and contrary to the
historical literature and received wisdom during the Cold War. This finding is all the more surprising
when considering the small size of the Soviet scientific workforce engaged in the non-defense sector
relative to the defense sector.
2
Among those examining the U.S.S.R.’s technological level and decision-making apparatus were Berliner (1976, 1988),
Amann, Cooper, and Davies (1977), Amann and Cooper (1982, 1986), Bergson (1983), Thornton (1988), Scanlon (1992),
and Linz (1992).
4
From the Soviet data, I find that domestic inventive activity was increasing over time. More
surprisingly, I find that Soviet inventors were more prolific than U.S. inventors for much of the late
Soviet period.
Beyond the level of activity, this new archival evidence and historical patent data shed light on the
pattern and direction of invention and innovation in the Soviet Union. Even more, the data can be
combined with a series of little-known Soviet experiments to provide a more nuanced interpretation
of their outcomes and act as validation of the data as a source of technological change. Unlike the
conventional aggregate data used by researchers from the World Intellectual Property Organization,
the new data are disaggregated and allow a distinction between patents and other types of invention,
as well as domestic and foreign invention in the Soviet Union.
In the course of observing total inventive activity over time, I find patterns in the data that are not
random. I find differences with respect to technological sector of invention within and outside the
Soviet Union. Among Soviet inventors, drug and chemical inventions make up a larger share of
foreign inventive activity compared to domestic inventive activity. More importantly, I find that
much of this activity reflected individual effort, as measured by share of registered inventions
assigned to individual inventors. Individual effort is not only evident in the foreign patent data but
also surprisingly evident in the domestic data, despite stated limits on inventor control of registered
inventive activity.
To date, this is the first systematic analysis of Soviet domestic and foreign
inventive activity.
I also extend the analysis to ask whether traditional demand and supply factors correlated with U.S.
patent activity – GDP and R&D spending – also covary with Soviet domestic and foreign inventive
5
activity and examine whether policies promoting greater individual inventor effort are correlated
with inventive outcomes. If these Soviet market-oriented policies are effective, we should observe
greater responsiveness among the individuals who are likely to respond to changes in incentives than
among those less likely to respond. I find that inventive activity by individuals is correlated with
GNP but not with R&D spending.
Policies promoting individual effort are correlated with
individual foreign patent activity but not directly with individual domestic IC activity.
The
fundamental contribution of this paper is a test of the efficacy of Soviet incentives by way of a
reassessment of Soviet inventive activity. Specifically, socialism gives us an interesting way to
measure inventive activity both in the absence of a patent system and when patent rights are
available. The new data will help researchers answer more and larger questions related to economic
outcomes.
I. The Need for Reform and Incentives
Slowing technological advance and the growing technological gap with the West in the decades
following WWII were well documented and of great interest to both scholars of the Soviet Union
and to Soviet policymakers. 3 In a letter to the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, Andrei
Sakharov and colleagues Roy Medvedev and Valentin Turchin lamented the differences in
technological progress between the Soviet Union and industrialized capitalist countries, e.g., in the
Outside the U.S.S.R., primarily in an effort to explain deteriorating Soviet economic growth performance,
economists made various attempts to measure changes in total factor productivity of which R&D would be a
part, e.g., Bergson (1963, 1968, 1987), Balassa (1964), Berliner (1964), OECD (1969), Weitzman (1970),
Brubaker (1972), Joint Economic Committee of Congress (1982, 1990), Desai (1976, 1986), Gomulka (1986),
Kontorovich (1986), and Ofer (1987).
3
6
computer industry which “lived in another age.”4 Grossman (1966) points to plans for new
technology as being among the least effective or successful in the Soviet industrial sector, and Linz
(1992) reports that the 150 million rubles in cost saving per year were derived from only three
percent of inventions.5 To mitigate technological decline in absolute terms and relative to the West,
Soviet policymakers sought to encourage the production of new ideas and identified the incentive to
invent and to innovate as a high priority for reform.6 In particular, individual effort would be critical
to providing enterprises with inventions of products and processes for exploitation and
improvement, since the lion’s share of innovative activity was initiated in enterprises. Therefore, as
a part of a larger effort to exploit the incentive features of markets, market-type incentives were
introduced to increase individual effort.7
Starting in the late 1950’s, Soviet planners offered pecuniary and non-pecuniary compensation to
this end. Monetary compensation appeared mainly in the form of increases in wages, salaries, and
bonuses and favorable tax treatment for inventors. Non-pecuniary benefits included prizes, job
promotions, housing privileges, and greater acknowledgement and limited control of their
inventions. Exemplary inventors and innovators may have also been awarded the honor Zasluzhenniĭ
izobretatel’ CCCR (Honored Inventor of the U.S.S.R.) or Geroy Sotsialisticheskovo Truda (Hero of
Socialist Labor), which was the highest decoration of the Soviet Union.8 In addition, policymakers
offered the designation of inventions of “national significance.”9
4
Sakharov, Turchin, and Mevedev (1970).
Grossman (1966), p. 126, and Linz (1992), p. 66.
6
In this paper, innovative activity will mean activity associated with the operationalization or commercialization of
inventions.
7 Von Mises (1949/1998) and Harrison (2005) refer to the resulting institution as a quasi-market, because the market is
allowed to guide agents in their decentralized transactions and resources to their most productive ends within the
framework of centralized plans.
8 Heroes of Socialist Labor could be selected from a number of fields: science and technology, industry, agriculture,
trade and transportation. Boris Paton, a prolific inventor with U.S. patents and Soviet inventor’s certificates and director
of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences since 1953, was the recipient of a number of the most prestigious awards,
5
7
Most incentives were targeted at the avtorskoe svidetel’stvo (author’s or inventor’s certificate), which
replaced the patent as the primary form of registered invention following the Bolshevik Revolution.
It offered recognition of the inventor without control rights over the invention (see Figure 1).
Control rights were assigned to the Soviet government, and the technology was available to any
state-owned enterprise or entity wishing to use it.10 In theory, patents were still available to Soviet
inventors in the Soviet Union, but in practice they were appreciably more difficult to obtain than
inventor’s certificates (ICs). Inventions of “national significance” would have been selected by
national authorities and selected among inventor’s certificates.
At the same time, aggregate targets were set for inventive and innovative output in National
Economic Plans and reported monthly, quarterly, and yearly.11 While targets were set for research
institutes, enterprises, and universities, they, too, were individualized, since individual inventors were
exhorted to fulfill the “socialist promise” and exceed stated targets.12
In the early 1960’s, Soviet authorities opened invention up to international competition by allowing,
if not encouraging, Soviet inventors to patent abroad. First, in 1962, Licensintorg was established as
the foreign-trade organization charged with negotiating commercial transactions between Soviet
inventors and enterprises and Western firms based on the market for intellectual property.13 Similar
including Hero of Socialist Labor (1969, 1978), Honored Inventor of the U.S.S.R. (1983), and Honored Worker of
Science and Technology of the Ukrainian S.S.R. (1968).
9 Author’s interview with Roald Sagdeev (2010).
10 Further, sanctions on private property in the socialist system implied that Soviet policymakers’ choice set was limited
and, correspondingly, that their actions with respect to control rights were more publicly circumscribed.
11 Zaleski (1969), p. 75.
12 Author’s interview with Roald Sagdeev (2010). According to Sagdeev, a plasma physicist who was head of a
laboratory at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok and director of the Space Research
Institute in Moscow, at the height of the Soviet period (the 1960’s), each research institute was required to draw up an
annual plan providing three inventions or innovations of “national significance.”
13 According to Licensintorg (2009), it was both the authorized supplier of national industrial property rights and was
responsible for 75 percent of imports of foreign licenses to modernize Soviet plants related to defense and consumer
products. Among its principal duties were to promote Soviet inventions abroad; identify commercial opportunities for
8
to inventions, targets for license sales were set and included in Five-Year Plans.14 Then, in 1965, the
Soviet Union became a signatory to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property,
which protected Soviet inventions abroad and foreign inventions in the Soviet Union.
Most
developed countries had adopted the Paris Convention much earlier. The Convention also made it
possible for national authorities to offer the designation of inventions of “international significance”
to Soviet inventors, if a patent was obtained abroad. Importantly, it would have been impossible for
the State Committee on Discoveries and Inventions, the body charged with issuing ICs and patents,
to determine international importance, since prior art and related inventions were neither required
nor important for the application and registration of inventions in the Soviet Union.
Subsequent reforms focused on promoting individual effort through changes in the organization of
inventive and innovative activity and in intellectual-property features. In 1979, a comprehensive
administrative reorganization of the planning and implementation of scientific and technical
programs was undertaken, the first major intervention since 1965. Decentralization of efforts and
resources in favor of inventors was a major objective of this reorganization. In 1985, Gorbachev
initiated the first wave of modern patent reform, which he considered, along with increased
investment in R&D, a central feature of perestroika, or fundamental restructuring of the economy.
Beginning in 1989, inventors were granted greater autonomy and exclusive rights to their inventions
for 20 years, compensation to inventors was augmented, development funding external to the
enterprise system was created, and incentives were offered for foreign use of inventions. Soviet
patents became easier to obtain for Soviet inventors, and the playing field became more level
Soviet firms, institutes, and government; file patents on behalf of Soviet individuals, institutes, and firms; and arrange
visits to the U.S.S.R. for firms interested in purchasing Soviet technology. While such a foreign-trade organization was
not new in the Soviet Union, the establishment of Licensintorg represented a new effort at participating in the
international market for intellectual property.
14 See description of laws pertaining to license trade in Boguslavskiĭ, et al. (1966, 1988).
9
between patents and ICs. Also in 1989, signaling a significant shift in priorities and resources, Soviet
authorities increased civilian R&D from 1.5 percent of GNP to 2.3 percent of GNP, while military
R&D declined by a similar amount.15
If these incentives and policies worked, we would anticipate increasing domestic and foreign
inventive activity among Soviet inventors. We might also expect intensification of effort or greater
assertion of control among individual inventors.
III. Data
The units of analysis will be patents and inventor’s certificates.16 A unique data set has been
constructed using three types of data: inventor’s certificates obtained only by Soviet residents in the
Soviet Union, patents obtained by Soviet residents in the U.S., and patents obtained by residents and
non-residents in the Soviet Union. The U.S. data are used as a proxy for foreign patenting by Soviet
inventors in the analysis below.
Archival data on patents and inventor’s certificates from the State Committee on Discoveries and
Inventions have recently become available through the Russian and German Patent Offices and
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The difficult task in collecting data on Soviet
inventive activity is that patents and ICs were aggregated in the Soviet data, and only recently have
15
See Andrews (1990) and Schroeder (1987, 1989) for a brief description of Gorbachev-era and related announcements
and initiatives pertaining to invention and patent reform.
For well-known reasons, patent data are limited in their ability to represent all inventive activity. Among
these factors are that some inventions are not patentable; others are better suited for other types of
intellectual property protection, e.g. trademarks, copyrights, or trade secrets; and there are inherent biases
among types of inventions patented, e.g., machines. Further, not all inventive activity is officially registered,
which would depress the number of both patents and ICs.
16
10
they been coded separately to distinguish between the two.17 Soviet patent and IC records are
available for application years 1960 to 1991.18 To date, of the approximately 808,048 IC documents,
more than three quarters have been fully digitized, are computer-searchable, and could be extracted.
The probability of a match between an IC and U.S. patent granted to a Soviet resident will be
diminished for an IC registered between 1960 and 1976, although the probability was already low
prior to 1967 due to the low number of U.S. patents issued to Soviet residents and relatively low
levels of ICs issued.19 Each Soviet patent or IC record contains first initial or first name, middle
initial (for patronymic), and surname of inventor(s); patent or IC number; application date; grant
date; international patent classification (IPC); applicant (assignee); backward citations (patents and
those matched to patents only), and a brief description or title of the patent. IPC codes from Soviet
patents and ICs are matched to Hall-Jaffe-Trajtenberg (2001) one-digit NBER technological classes.
U.S. data on utility patents are collected from two sources. 20 First, patents with at least one inventor
residing in the U.S.S.R. are collected from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database.
Each U.S. patent record contains full names of the Soviet or Russian patentee(s); names of coinventors; patent number; location of the inventor; application date; grant date; forward and
backward citations; U.S. patent classification; assignment status; assignee, including location; and a
17
For example, WIPO reports data on patent grants to the Soviet Union by residents and non-residents from 1925 to
1929 and 1963 to 1991. While non-residents receive most of the patents and residents receive all of the ICs, Soviet
residents sometimes receive patents, and these must be separated from the ICs in the data for residents.
18 This represents grant years 1973 to 1991 (patents) and 1977 to 1991 (ICs). Extracting the data on inventor’s
certificates at the online websites is not comparable to searching online databases, such as Google Patents, Pattools, or
the USPTO or EPO databases, due to capacity constraints and limited search capability. The GPTO data are used
because of greater search functionality relative to the ROSPATENT data.
19 The cut-off date for full digitization of records at 1977 has been arbitrarily set by the GPTO. Roughly 24 percent of
IC documents had missing data due to the poor quality of reproduction. These mistakes in reproduction appear to be
random and do not disproportionately affect certain years, fields of invention, types of inventors, etc. Therefore, it is
believed that sample bias is not systematic.
Most patents granted in the U.S. are utility patents. A utility patent is granted if an invention is found to
be novel, useful, and non-trivial, and patent rights are granted for 20 years from the date of application. The
empirical analysis uses data on utility patents. Further, not all inventive activity is officially registered, which
would depress the number of both patents and ICs.
20
11
brief description or title of the patent.21 By application year, these data extend from 1959 to 1991.
Second, data on patents with at least one inventor residing in the U.S.S.R. are collected from the
Hall, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg (2001)-NBER U.S. patent citation data file. Each patent record from
this data set contains the data listed above from the USPTO database and also data on one- and
two-digit technological class.22 By application year, the data in the Hall, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg (2001)
data set extend from 1963 to 1991.
To measure the degree of similarity between Soviet residents’ inventive activity at home and abroad,
Soviet patents and ICs were matched to corresponding U.S. patents.23 Since ICs do not have
backwards citations, i.e., references to prior art – previous inventions or research – were not
required and, given differing standards and rules governing registration and application, identical
records in the two series would not be predicted. Two matching criteria were used. First, matches
were sought by names of members of patent teams. An inventor match was successful if at least
two names of a patent team of size greater than one matched exactly, i.e., first name, last name, and
patronymic. Second, matches were sought by title of invention.24 A title match was successful if at
least half of the substantive words, e.g., excluding articles “the” and “a” or prepositions, matched. A
series of backward citations is constructed from the U.S. patents to which ICs were matched. Using
similar matching techniques, inventors were matched to other forms of inventive activity. In
21
Forward citations are citations received by a patent. Backward citations are the patents recorded as prior art in the
patent application, which the inventor is required to disclose. In the economics literature, patent citations are examined
to assess “patent quality” or knowledge transfer.
22 The one-digit categories are chemical, computers and communications, drugs and medical, mechanical, electrical and
electronic, and other (miscellaneous).
23 Due to the availability of detailed IC data beginning only in grant year 1977 (application year 1960) and due to missing
data, we would anticipate a reduced likelihood of IC-patent matches. The patents that meet the original criteria should
be treated as a lower bound on the number of true IC-patent matches.
24 This approach will be conservative for two reasons. First and more importantly, a non-trivial number of IC records
contain names of inventors without middle initials, which will depress the number of exact matches. Second, inventors
listed on U.S. patents and seemingly related ICs vary. Obtaining exact name matches for teams slightly larger than two
may be problematic in these cases.
12
addition, Google Scholar was used to match first-named inventors on patents to books and journal
articles published abroad.
There are 623,357 ICs, 216 Soviet patents, and 6,899 U.S. patents granted to Soviet residents in the
data set. In the analysis that follows, U.S. patents with application dates between 1959 and 1991 will
be considered.25 Selected examples of U.S. patents to Soviet inventors appear in Table 1. These
inventions ranged from drugs and medical devices to software and insect repellant. Sales of
Ethmozine, a treatment for irregular heartbeats in wide use in the Soviet Union in the 1970’s prior
to being developed for use in the U.S., continued until 2007. 26
Table 2 compares foreign and domestic inventive activity in the U.S.S.R. and in the U.S. for selected
years between 1973 and 1991. The data simultaneously show dependence on foreign technological
spillovers through patenting in the 1970’s and dependence on resident Soviet inventors for the bulk
of registered inventive activity. The data in Table 2 also show that Soviet patents constitute a very
small fraction of total and foreign patent activity in the U.S. at any given time, i.e. one percent in
1979. The share of foreign inventions is larger but still small in the Soviet Union and constitutes
four percent of total inventive activity recorded in the U.S.S.R. in 1979. In line with the domestic
bias against patent grants, of the 21,834 patents issued in the Soviet Union between 1973 and 1991,
21,618 were obtained by foreign inventors.27
Similarly, the Committee on Discoveries and
Inventions took nearly twice as long, four years, to grant a patent compared to an inventor’s
25
Re-issued patents are excluded from the data set. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 31, 1991. The use
of “Russia” instead of “S.U.” does not coincide exactly with this date, but all patents through this date are included in
the data set.
26 Schattle (1990) and Wall Street Journal (2007).
27 Author’s calculations. Having been awarded a Soviet patent did not bestow the same honor as being named a Lenin
or State prize winner for distinction in a given area of science or a member of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.
There is no clear pattern among the Soviet patents or their inventors to suggest that they were of superior quality and
merit extraordinary acknowledgement or even a patent instead of an inventor’s certificate.
13
certificate. The average time from application to award for inventor’s certificates and patents
awarded to Soviet inventors by the USPTO was significantly shorter – 1.9 and 2.1 years.28
Of the ICs obtained between 1977 and 1991, 747 matches to U.S. patents were identified, and no
matches were identified between the small number of Soviet patents granted to Soviet residents and
U.S. patents granted to Soviet residents. Table 3 also decomposes the results of matching the U.S.
patent sample to the IC sample. Roughly 17 percent of Soviet residents’ U.S. patents can be linked
to inventions originally registered domestically.29 This finding suggests little intersection between
domestic and international inventors and inventions. Most are mechanical and electrical inventions.
For a given technological category, Soviet patent teams on matched patents are only slightly – nine
percent – larger on average than Soviet patent teams on unmatched U.S. patents. Soviet patent
teams on matched patents had 6.3 members on average compared to 5.6 on average for unmatched
mechanical patents. In contrast, for a given technological category, Soviet inventors’ matched
patents were significantly more highly cited. The median matched drugs and medical patent was
cited 8.6 times compared to an unmatched drugs and medical patent, which was cited 6.1 times.
When comparing all U.S. patents to those obtained by Soviet inventors that have been matched to
ICs, there are two striking but predictable differences. First, for a given technological category,
Soviet patent teams are much larger on average than other teams, which is consistent with fullemployment objectives in a planned economy or with the idea that larger Soviet patent teams were
more engaged in basic research than others receiving patents in the U.S. Soviet patent teams had 7.4
28
Author’s calculations. Data are for the application-year period 1973 to 1991 for Soviet patents and ICs and 1963 to
1991for U.S. patents. Hall et al. (2001) find that two years is the mean time from application to award for U.S. patents
awarded between 1975 and 1999. The time for Soviet residents to receive patent grants for U.K. patents is only slightly
longer than that of the U.S. – 2.3 years. It is notable that the actual IC award period was six times longer than the review
time stated in Soviet guidelines.
29 If enterprises, institutes, and government entities had no record of inventions in the U.S.S.R., it would be relatively
easy to patent them abroad.
14
members on average compared to 2.4 on average for other chemical patents. Second, for a given
technological category, Soviet inventors’ patents were cited less often than inventors on all U.S.
patents. On average, Soviet teams on mechanical patents had 3.8 forward citations, and their
counterparts had 7.7. This is anticipated, given geographic constraints of Soviet scientific and
inventor networks, and it would be more difficult for non-Soviet inventors to access information on
Soviet inventors.30 This finding parallels those of Narin and Carpenter (1975, 1983) whose citation
analysis revealed that there were relatively few highly-cited papers and patents among Soviet
scientists during the Soviet period largely due to lack of familiarity with their work. Further, Narin,
Frame, and Carpenter (1983) found that, while Soviet researchers were second behind the U.S.
regarding publication counts, they tied with French researchers in being last among the six major
countries whose citations between 1965 and 1971 were studied. In this context, rather than being a
conventional measure of quality, the broader, more appropriate interpretation of citations to patents
is existence or size of international networks or inventor reputation. Therefore, within the sample of
U.S. patents issued to Soviet inventors, inventors on patents matched to ICs appear to have more
extensive external scientific networks and reputations than inventors on unmatched patents.
More than three quarters of matched patents are assigned to Soviet individuals, which is only slightly
lower than the share assigned to individuals in the sample of Soviet-inventors’ U.S. patents overall.
Svyatoslav Fyodorov, an internationally renowned pioneer of laser eye surgery and laboratory
director, is one of the inventors whose patents are matched to ICs. Interestingly, according to his
biography and to data collected, his first patent application was filed in the U.S. in 1970, two years
before his first invention was registered in the Soviet Union. While all of his ICs were assigned to
30
Contact between Soviet inventors, scientists, and industrial specialists and their foreign counterparts began declining
after 1928. In addition to increasingly limited travel to or from the U.S.S.R., scientists publishing and traveling abroad
were considered disloyal and expelled from the Academy of Sciences. Contact did not restart in earnest until after 1958.
See Parrott (1983) for a rich discussion of the isolation of Soviet science. Most patent teams are from the same
enterprise or research institute, and most patents were granted to residents of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Rarely are teams mixed across Soviet republics and, more rarely, across countries in the Eastern Bloc, e.g., Poland and
Yugoslavia.
15
the nearly autonomous Inter-Sectoral Research and Technology Complex for Eye Microsurgery he
directed in the U.S.S.R., 20 of the 38 U.S. patents he obtained were altogether unassigned, and
therefore assigned to himself. He also obtained 152 non-U.S. foreign patents between 1970 and
1991.31
To understand the activities of inventors engaged in both domestic and international inventive
activities, we also collected data on publications abroad. The data also reveal that 85, or 11 percent
of, U.S. patents granted to Soviet inventors matched to ICs are associated with publications abroad,
another measure of external and reputation-related orientation and of existing international scientific
networks. In 92 percent of these cases, the publications appeared earlier or in the same year as the
patent-application date. These data suggest that U.S. (or foreign) patents and foreign publications
had little intersection but that at least some Soviet inventors may have had extensive international
scientific networks, which may have been consumers of their scholarly research.
IV. Graphical Evidence
Figure 2 shows the evolution of formal inventive activity by Soviet residents in the U.S.S.R. and in
the U.S. between 1959 and 1991. From the mid-1960’s to the late 1970’s, domestic activity – mainly
ICs – increased dramatically and continued to expand through the late-1980’s, peaking in 1988.
Similarly, foreign inventive activity grew markedly from the mid-1960’s to the late 1970’s.32 In
contrast to domestic inventive activity, from its peak in 1978, foreign activity declined for much of
31
Matvejeva (2007) contains Fyodorov’s biographical information and inventive history.
32
A broad search of the European patent data reveals that patenting by Soviet inventors occurred in many countries,
including Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Britain, Finland, France, Germany (East and West), Greece, Israel, Japan,
Switzerland, and the U.S., and the majority were granted in Britain, West Germany, and the U.S. Such widespread patent
activity by Soviet inventors is also largely unknown in the literature. Increases in patenting in these countries are also
16
the remainder of the Soviet period. Nonetheless, the existence of nearly 7,000 U.S. patents makes
the Soviet Union comparable to other industrialized countries, such as Australia, Austria, and
Belgium.
This is a substantial number of patents for Soviet inventors. Indeed, on the face of it, the Soviet
Union had ideal conditions for scientific and technological superiority. R&D expenditure relative to
GDP was higher than in OECD countries, 2.6 percent on average, which was also higher than the
average for the U.S., 2.4 percent.33 In 1966, the U.S.S.R. had the largest scientific workforce, in
absolute terms, i.e., between 1.7 and 2.3 million workers.34 In 1972, the Soviet Union employed 2.8
million diploma engineers compared to 1.2 million in the U.S.35 Yet, these data will overstate the
civilian technological environment, since most resources were concentrated in defense-related
activities, not the civilian ones that would be reflected in these data.
This finding of a sizeable number of patents obtained by Soviet inventors stands in contrast to the
historical literature, which focused on technology transfer from the U.S.S.R. to the West and
contributors to which concluded that knowledge spillovers from the Soviet Union to the West were
largely insignificant.36 Although Sutton (1968, 1971, 1978), Amann, Cooper, and Davies (1977),
Amann and Cooper (1986), Kiser (1976, 1982, 1985), Bogomolov (1983), and Browne (1986)
provide examples of Soviet technology licensed in the U.K., U.S., and other countries during the
1970’s and early 1980’s, each work sheds light on a given firm or industry or at a discrete point in
observed over time. Due to the relatively large size and scope of patent activity in the U.S., these data are used in the
analysis in the paper. A companion paper examines patent activity among Soviet inventors in other countries.
33 Official Soviet R&D data are known to be unreliable and imprecise. Therefore, CIA and NSF estimates are used in
this paper.
34 Davies and Berry (1969) cited in Amann, et al (1977), p.27.
35 Heuer (1979), p.1.
36 Among others, the degree of dependence on technology transfers from the West to the U.S.S.R. has been addressed
by Burks (1969), Hanson (1976, 1981), Martens (1981, 1982), CIA (1982), US Congress (1982), Gomulka and Nove
(1984), and Bertsch (1986).
17
Soviet economic history. Until now, we had no full account of the duration and magnitude of these
flows throughout the Soviet period, and the dimensions of Soviet inventive and, to a lesser extent,
innovative activity abroad have been greatly underestimated.
Figure 2 also includes important dates related to intellectual-property reform and efforts designed to
augment inventive activity and its commercialization. Specifically, the bars represent the founding
of Licensintorg in 1962; the signing of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial
Property in 1965; comprehensive reorganization of the planning and implementation of scientific
and technical programs in 1979; Gorbachev’s first and second waves of patent reform in 1985 and
1989. The data suggest that the explosion in activity common to both series is associated with the
signing of the Paris Convention. More precisely, we find a statistically significant break in the U.S.
patent series two years after the signing of the treaty and in the IC series six years after the signing of
the treaty. This is an important finding, because Soviet inventors ostensibly had access to invention
abroad from 1925, but we do not observe robust patent activity outside the Soviet Union until the
mid-1960’s. Other changes in Soviet inventive output also appear related to reform and other
measures to increase effort among inventors, and these relations will be tested in estimation below.37
Was the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. more productive? The comparison of total inventive activity with the
U.S. in Figure 3 puts the Soviet Union in international context. With respect to the quantity of
registered inventive activity per million, Soviet resident inventors were more productive than U.S.
resident inventors between 1977 and 1988. On the one hand, this finding is surprising, given that
the lion’s share of the Soviet scientific workforce would have been in the defense industry and not
engaged in the domestic inventive activity that is measured. On the other hand, it is not surprising,
37
Due to the start date of the sample in which the regression models are estimated, reforms implemented prior to 1966
will occur too early and cannot be included in estimation.
18
particularly if inventors were responding to plan targets and to other state-directed incentives.
Quality comparisons will be difficult across these series. To reiterate, the quality of domestic Soviet
invention is hard to measure in traditional ways, given problems related to citation, especially lack of
recognition of prior art, or pre-existing related inventions and research, in ICs.
Fields of invention for Soviet residents’ inventions in the U.S. and in the U.S.S.R. – both patents and
ICs – are displayed in Figure 4. Over the period 1975 to 1991, the largest shares of patenting by
Soviet inventors in the U.S. were in the mechanical, chemical, and electrical fields. When comparing
U.S. patents to ICs, there are roughly twice as many inventions in chemicals, three times as many
inventions in drugs and medical inventions, and one third fewer inventions in computers and
communications. In light of the limits on patenting chemical inventions in the U.S.S.R., it is not
surprising that inventors would seek protection for these abroad. 38 Slightly more than half of all
inventions among the ICs and U.S. patents are in the electrical and mechanical fields. The share of
inventions in the miscellaneous category is larger among Soviet patents and ICs compared to U.S.
patents. Figure 4(d) displays the technological distribution of the matched patents. Compared to all
U.S. patents obtained by Soviet inventors, the matched patents contain larger shares of mechanical,
electrical, computer and communications, and miscellaneous inventions and smaller shares of
chemical and drugs and medical inventions.39
38
See Hoseh (1960), pp. 223-224. Historically, in the Soviet Union, as in a number of other countries, the patentability
of pharmaceutical and chemical inventions was restricted due to national interests, e.g., health and industry protection.
Inventor’s certificates were issued for drugs and other chemicals used to treat diseases. In 1988, 44 countries prohibited
patents for pharmaceuticals (mainly developing countries), and 22 prohibited chemical patents (see Drahos 2002). Van
Caenegem (1993) reports that constraints on the patentability of chemicals were relaxed in the Soviet Union beginning in
1988.
39 A correlation coefficient test implies that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. patent offices attracted different types of invention.
Soviet inventors’ activity in the U.S. and in the U.S.S.R. is largely uncorrelated across technological fields, with significant
(and negative) correlation coefficients of 0.51 and 0.59 for mechanical and miscellaneous inventions only.
19
Table 1 also contains examples of organizations to which patented inventions were assigned at issue,
i.e., at the time of the patent grant. Many assigned patents listed Soviet enterprises and research
institutes, e.g., the Kirov Machine-Building Factory or the Paton Electrical Institute of the Academy
of Sciences of Ukraine, as assignees.40 Few American or other foreign firms were assignees before
1990.41
Patent records are limited in conveying information related to commercial transactions, because they
do not capture commercial activity in the secondary market. A better measure of commercialization
activity is offered by data on license transactions. Sutton (1973) lists 61 licenses issued in 11
countries by 1967.42 Kiser (1976, 1983, 1985) collected data on licenses for Soviet technology
obtained by U.S. firms in the 1970’s and 1980’s. He finds that there were 30 licenses negotiated with
the Soviets for their inventions by 1985 and that these sales had resulted in roughly $75 million in
licenses and fees over the 15 years prior.43 Amann and Cooper (1986) estimate that there were 126
licenses for Soviet technology sold to U.S. firms. Any of these estimates is small relative to total
U.S. patents obtained by Soviet residents. A slightly larger share of patents matched to ICs was
assigned at issue, 25 percent, than those that are unmatched, 18 percent.44 Whether considering
assignment or licensing data, opportunities for commercialization were limited during the Soviet
period.
40
Other state-owned institutions to which patents were assigned included collective farms, regional and local R&D
organizations, and hospitals. Boris Paton, who with his father co-founded the internationally renowned E.O. Paton
Electric Welding Institute in Kiev, is one of the best-known and most prolific inventors in the data set. Many of his
inventions are related to electroslag welding, which is used to join thick steel plates and other materials. Assignment in
this case would be nearly identical to assigning to oneself, and the share of individual patents would be larger if such
patents were classified as individual patents.
41 Most firms which were assignees were patent brokers, like Patent Management Company, rather than the ultimate
users of the inventions themselves.
42
Sutton (1973), pp. 358-9, and Kapralov (1976).
43 Kiser (1985), pp. 77-78.
44 Patents can be assigned to individuals, firms, and other organizations at the time of application, and this information
appears on the patent record once the patent is issued.
20
Assignment data for U.S. patents granted to Soviet residents are plotted in Figure 5. The two lines
represent patents assigned to individuals (unassigned) and assigned to organizations.45
Two
important findings not previously documented in the historical literature arise from examining these
series.
First, between 1966 and 1991, the majority of patents were assigned to individuals, although this
share waxed and waned in the final years of the Soviet era.46 It is striking that such a small fraction
of patents would be assigned initially to Soviet enterprises and research institutes with whom the
inventors were affiliated. According to the Soviet statute governing discoveries, inventions, and
innovations in the U.S.S.R., the state retained exclusive rights to inventions in the U.S.S.R. within
the territory of the U.S.S.R. and abroad.47 Yet, the practice was not only evident in the U.S. patent
data, it is also observed in the IC data. One third of ICs are also not assigned to Soviet institutions
as required. Anecdotal evidence from the Soviet press provides some support for these findings and
suggests that the exercise of individual initiative did not go unnoticed by Soviet authorities.48
Although it is less plausible that inventors genuinely had control rights over most patents, it is more
plausible that individuals acting on their own to file patent and IC applications willingly dropped
association with an institute or other organization in order to signal individual effort and assert
attribution for the invention. In fact, such activity seemed to foreshadow what would happen with
45
Control rights revert to inventors if unassigned.
Patents can be assigned to individuals, firms, and other organizations at the time of application, and this information
appears in the patent record once the patent is issued.
46
See Syvadosts (1981) for an explanation of provisions of Article 111 of the Fundamentals of Civil Legislation of
the U.S.S.R. and Soviet Republics and the civil code related to inventions. In practice, there was an unclear
mechanism for transfer of patent rights to the state in the case of foreign patents.
47
48
In a 1962 Pravda article, Yevgeny Artemyev, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Inventions and
Innovations, reported that most patents and inventor’s certificates had been applied for by inventors working on their
own time, despite the fact that most inventions stemmed from activity in government agencies and research institutes.
21
post-Soviet patent reform, since control rights ultimately reverted to inventors of foreign patents
and ICs.
Second, the two assigned-patent series evolve differently over time. More importantly, whereas we
find a structural break following the Paris Convention that is identical to that in the main patent
series in the series for patents assigned to individuals, we do not observe such a structural break in
the series for patents assigned to organizations.
This dichotomy is suggestive that those inventors inclined to signal individual effort are more
responsive to incentives designed to increase individual effort and market-oriented practices and
signals more generally than their counterparts who are less inclined to signal individual effort. We
test this proposition in the next section. More broadly, we test whether U.S. patents and ICs
assigned to individual Soviet inventors followed traditional patterns found in U.S. patent data and
whether these are correlated with policies intended to increase individual inventive output.
V. Econometric Evidence
It is possible to examine the basic covariates of foreign and domestic inventive activity using U.S.
and Soviet data to evaluate proximity to results using U.S. data alone. The analysis follows Griliches
(1957, 1990), Schmookler (1962, 1966, 1972), Mansfield (1968), and Kortum (1993), and others who
posit a relation between R&D and demand factors and patent activity.
Therefore, the basic
empirical structure relates inventive activity to R&D expenditure, economic activity, and patentprotection or patent-reform measures.49 To measure changes in individual effort, in the time-series
49
Griliches (1957) and subsequent authors use estimates of GDP. Due to the poor quality and questionable reliability of
economic data produced in the Soviet Union, the CIA’s estimates of Soviet GNP and R&D spending from the Joint
22
model below the dependent variable is the share of inventive activity assigned to individuals. 50 The
identifying assumption of this empirical strategy is that inventors concerned with individual effort
and, therefore, more sensitive to competition and market-like incentives should be more affected by
inventor-oriented policy changes and reforms than other inventors.
Specifically, I estimate the following OLS pooled time-series regression for the Soviet period:
ΔINDSHAREt =
α + β1ΔSOVYt
+ β2ΔR&Dt-1
+ β3d1979t +
β6ΔR&Dt-1*d1979t + β7ΔR&Dt-1*d1985t + β8ΔR&Dt-1*d1989t +
β4d1985t + β5d1989t
β9t + Δεt,
+
(1)
where INDSHAREt is share of individual patents or Soviet ICs in the total to Soviet residents in
year t; R&Dt-1 is lagged Soviet R&D expenditure scaled by Soviet GNP from CIA (1991) and UN
(2009a); SOVYt is log of Soviet GNP, a proxy for aggregate demand; and d1979t, d1985t, and d1989t
are dummies for major invention-reform years mentioned earlier. Standard errors are corrected for
the heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation.
Reform-year dummies are interacted with R&D
spending to obtain any additional effect of R&D spending following policy changes, e.g., the shift in
emphasis from military to civilian R&D in 1989. That is, intensified research and development
efforts coupled with reforms providing more incentives for inventors may have resulted in more
inventive activity. Since the data do not reject the hypothesis of a unit root in the patent-share and
Economic Committee of Congress (1982, 1990) are used in estimation. While these data have well-known
shortcomings, as articulated extensively in CIA (1991) and Maddison (1998) as elsewhere, they constitute one of the
most complete series available and are widely used in the literature, e.g., Brainerd (2010). The CIA data are available for
1950 to 1987. Later years are supplemented with data from Gorodnikova (1994) with UN (2009) and OECD (2006).
Soviet R&D data do not distinguish between military and civilian R&D, and Soviet efforts were largely oriented towards
military R&D. In Griliches (1957) and the aforementioned literature, it is typically found that, on average, a one-percent
increase in R&D expenditure is correlated with a 0.2-percent to 0.4-percent increase in patent activity in the U.S.
50 By default, if patents are not assigned to a firm, organization, etc. at the time of issue, patent rights revert to the
inventors.
23
IC-share samples, the model is estimated in first differences.51 We expect behavior by individuallyoriented inventors in the patent and IC samples to covary positively with market-related activity and
with inventor-oriented reforms.
Demand and Market Signals
Consistent with findings from the U.S. patent literature, the positive estimated coefficients on log
GNP in the patent and IC samples in Table 4 suggest that inventive activity responds favorably
when economic activity is more robust. A 10-percent increase in GNP increases the share of
individual patents by 12 percent per year in the patent sample. Log GNP is also positively correlated
with share of individual patents in the IC sample. As a check on the robustness of this result and
given measurement problems associated with estimates of Soviet GNP, I substituted the price of
crude oil for Soviet GNP as a proxy for economic activity. 52 Again, changes in economic activity
and patent activity are positively and significantly correlated (the point estimate is 0.013), and the
relation is not significant in the IC sample.
Supply and Inventive Output
In contrast to evidence from the U.S. patent literature, inventive behavior is negatively correlated
with R&D spending. The regressions in Table 4 show that increases in R&D spending covary
negatively with patenting by individual inventors abroad and IC production by individual inventors.
Simply increasing the share of resources for R&D is associated with the opposite effect of
diminished invention resulting from individual action. A 10 percentage-point increase in R&D
51
Results from an augmented Dickey-Fuller test suggest a unit root. The patent and IC series are first-differenced, and a
time trend is included in estimation.
52 Crude oil data are from World Bank/GEMS (2012). The Soviet GNP series appears to contain a nontrivial amount of
market information, since the correlation between Soviet GNP and the international price of crude oil price is positive
and statistically significant, whether tested using levels or logs.
24
spending one year prior would lead to an estimated 11- percent drop in the share of patenting
abroad by individual inventors in the current year. These findings are not surprising, since Soviet
R&D was not allocated on a market basis but according to plan targets.53
Such a practice would
suppress individual effort. Further, Thornton (2008) reports that, when applications were submitted
for certification of an invention, the actual researchers were “usually at the bottom of a long list of
higher officials, who knew little about the actual scientific questions but were crucial for the
continued budgetary support of activity,” which would minimize individual initiative among
inventors.
Reforms, Inventor Incentives, and Inventive Activity
Using the new data and as a check of the data, I ask: Did incentives to enhance individual effort
among Soviet inventors work?
Inventor responsiveness varied by type of invention and
intervention. In the patent sample, individual effort was maximized by reforms associated with
reorganization of scientific and technical programs coupled with R&D spending and by early
Gorbachev-era patent reforms that included enhanced inventor protections and incentives. After
1985, the patent regression line is shifted up by nearly 0.2 percent. In contrast, the degree of
individual effort in IC inventions is negatively and significantly correlated with reforms to
intellectual property in the late Gorbachev era. This is intuitive, because one pillar of this reform
was to make patents more accessible to Soviet inventors within the Soviet Union. Individuallyoriented inventors were more likely to substitute ICs for patents when domestic patents, along with
their enhanced control rights, became available. The data reported in Table 1 support this revealed-
53
In contrast, changes in R&D spending and the overall level of ICs are highly correlated. The correlation coefficient
between changes in the previous year’s ratio of R&D spending to GNP and the level of ICs is also positive and
significant. This is consistent with findings from traditional models of patenting.
25
preference argument and show that there was a dramatic shift from ICs to patents among Soviet
inventors in the U.S.S.R. between 1988 and 1991. This finding suggests that the policy intervention
in 1989 was effective in shifting autonomy to inventors and in raising individual effort. This
evidence differs from Amman and Cooper (1986) who find that, organizational reforms to R&D
were particularly ineffective.
We can infer from this exercise that the quality of the data is good,
since the estimates are reasonable and in the expected direction.
VI. Conclusion and Future Research
New data on patent and other inventive activity by Soviet inventors have allowed us to extend the
literature on incentives and inventive activity. This analysis represents the first systematic evaluation
of Soviet domestic and foreign inventive activity. The unique data also allow us to examine whether
market-oriented policies and practices to raise individual effort and, therefore, new ideas that would
lead to higher standards of living, actually worked.
The evidence suggests that these experiments with market orientation were successful along a
number of dimensions. Domestic and foreign inventive activity increased. Foreign patent activity
responded to the protection of Soviet inventors’ patent rights abroad. Soviet inventors further
displayed initiative and exerted control where they could – in registration and ownership.
In addition to extending our general understanding of Soviet civilian inventive activity domestically
and abroad, this paper provides further evidence of the starkly different and competing incentives of
market and planned economies and their uneasy coexistence in the U.S.S.R. While another line of
research, e.g., Grossman (1977), emphasizes the duality between the hidden, informal market
26
economy and the formal planned economy, I show that rather than being invisible, independent,
market-oriented behavior was hidden in plain view in the U.S. and in the Soviet Union. While
Soviet officials publicly derided individual initiative, it was successfully promoted among Soviet
inventors.
Along other dimensions, it must be recognized that the outcomes from these experiments were
more limited. Technological slowdown nonetheless occurred. There was some but still relatively
little commercialization of Soviet invention. And living standards that were supposed to be lifted by
technological advance deteriorated in the late Soviet period.
The new data introduce a plethora of new questions. For example, the analysis suggests that further
inquiry related to inventor incentives is warranted. Explicit tests of explanations, such as those
related to international or domestic reputation, as explored by Harrison (2005), would be a possible
extension of this work with more data but would be beyond the scope of the current paper.
27
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Figure 1. Inventor’s Certificate # 929145 for Apparatus for Periodic Extraction, Issued by the
State Committee on Discoveries and Inventions, January 21, 1982.
Source: IMPA Engineering Ltd. (2010)
Note: Inventors named are Boris Kostantinovich Marushchkin, Galimzyan Karimovich
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35
Table 1. Soviet Inventions Patented in the U.S., Assigned or Licensed, 1927 to 1991
Year
Description of Invention
1927
1932
1940
1964
1966
1969
1970
1971
1971
1972
1972
Photoelectric cell
Control system
Antenna construction
Surgical stapling device
Fluid self-hardening moulding mixture
Rock-breaking machine
Water canon
Titanium hip prosthesis
Pneumatic drifter drill
HPTR cold rolling mill
Evaporation cooling process for blast
furnaces
Cored wire manufacturing process for
electric welding
Process for making silicon aluminum alloys
Electron beam accelerator
Magnetic impact bonding
Electromagnetic casting aluminum technique
Ethmozine for cardiac arrest
Pyrroxan, for central nervous system
disorders
Insect repellant
1973
1973
1973
1974
1974
1974
1974
1975
1975
1975
Graphite furnace accessory to atomic
absorption spectrometers
Underground coat gasification technology
1976
1978
1978
1982
1982
Ftorafur, anticancer drug
Surgical staplers
Software for neutron activation analysis
Medical preparation Riocidin
Biodegradable polymer pin for orthopedics
Source: Kiser (1976, 1982, 1985); USPTO (2010).
36
Assignee or Licensee
Industrial Research
Co.
General Electric
RCA
U.S. Surgical Co.
Heppinstall
Joy Manufacturing
Terra Space Co.
U.S. Surgical Co.
Allied Steel & Tractor
Patent Management
Andco Co.
Chemtron Co.
Ethyl Co.
Energy Sciences, Inc.
Maxwell Laboratories
Reynolds Aluminum
DuPont
American Home
Products
American Home
Products
Perkin Elmer
Texas Utility Service,
Inc.
Bristol-Myers
3M
Codevinted Pacific
Ciba Geigy USA
Medco
400
80000
Licensintorg
Paris Convention
R&D reform
Gorbachev I
1975
Number of U.S. patents
100
200
300
1970
1980
1965
Gorbachev II
1990
0
1985
1960
1970
1980
1990
0
20000
40000
60000
Number of USSR ICs and patents
500
Figure 2: Inventive Activity, Soviet Inventors, 1959 – 1991,
By Application Year
Application year
U.S. patents granted to Soviet residents
USSR ICs and patents granted to Soviet residents
Source: Author’s calculation. [U.S. patents] USPTO (2009), Hall et al. (2001); [U.S.S.R. ICs and patents] GPTO (2009).
Note: U.S. data include patents for which one or more inventors are residents of the U.S.S.R. U.S.S.R. patents and ICs are
documents granted between 1973 and 2007. U.S. patents are patents granted between 1963 and 2007. Lines denote major
changes to IP policies and practices and to the Soviet Union.
37
50
Number of patents/ICs per million
100
150
200
250
Figure 3: U.S. Patents and U.S.S.R. Patents and Inventor’s Certificates, 1971-1991, by
Application Year
1970
1975
1980
Application year
1985
1990
USSR patents and ICs granted to USSR residents
U.S. patents granted to U.S. residents
Source: Author’s calculation. [U.S. patents] USPTO, Hall et al. (2001); [U.S.S.R. ICs and patents] GPTO; [Population data] UN
(2009b). Note: U.S.S.R. patents and ICs are documents granted between 1973 and 2007. U.S. patents are patents granted
between 1971 and 2007.
Table 2. Inflows and Outflows of Inventive Activity, USSR and US, Selected Grant Years
USSR
Patents
USSR
Year
1973
1976
1979
1982
1985
1988
1991
Total
2,249
2,047
2,855
1,513
1,081
1,273
920
Residents
0
0
1
0
2
2
175
Total
21,834
216
Foreign
USSR ICs
USSR
Residents Residents
2,249
na
2,047
34,559
2,854
45,337
1,513
70,650
1,079
49,122
1,271
52,115
745
64,209
21,618
808,048
US Patents
US
Foreign
Total
74,143
70,226
48,854
57,888
71,661
77,924
96,511
Residents
50,799
43,092
29,396
32,360
37,866
38,298
47,567
Residents
23,344
27,134
19,458
25,528
33,795
39,626
48,944
Of which:
USSR
Residents
324
428
356
215
149
99
179
1,075,573
578,699
496,874
5,291
Source: [USSR Patents, ICs] GPTO; [US Patents] USPTO
Note: Soviet data are for all patents and ICs. U.S. data are for utility patents. Data are reported by grant year.
IC data begin in 1977. For Soviet and US patents, the total given is for all years from 1973 to 1991. For ICs, the
total given is for all years from 1977 to 1991.
38
Figure 4: Soviet Patents, U.S. Patents, and Soviet Inventor’s Certificates Granted to Soviet
Residents, 1975-1991, by Application Year
(a) Soviet Patents to Soviet Residents
(b) U.S. Patents to Soviet Residents
1975-1991
1977-1991
Other
Chemical
Chemical
Cmp & Cmm
13.7%
12.2%
Drgs & Med
1.9%
6.6%
Other
39.0%
23.7%
3.0%Cmp & Cmm
30.1%
17.8%
8.8%
Mech
Elec
Drgs & Med
20.6%
22.5%
Elec
Mech
(c) Soviet Inventor’s Certificates to Soviet Residents
(d) U.S. Patents Matched to Soviet ICs
1975-1991
1977-1991
Chemical
Other
Other
22.5%
12.5%
17.2%
Cmp & Cmm
17.6%
Cmp & Cmm
4.4%
10.3%
2.5% Drgs & Med
26.1%
Chemical
6.0% Drgs & Med
31.9%
26.2%
Mech
22.8%
Mech
Elec
Elec
Source: Author’s calculation. USPTO (2009) and GPTO (2009).
Note: U.S. data include patents for which one or more inventors are residents of the U.S.S.R.
U.S.S.R. patents are granted between 1977 and 1991. U.S. patents in (b) and (d) are granted between 1975 and
1991. U.S.S.R. ICs are ICs granted between 1977 and 1991.
39
0
Number of U.S. patents
100
200
300
400
Figure 5: Assignment Status of U.S. Patents to Soviet Inventors,
1959 – 1991, by Application Year
1960
1970
1980
1990
Application year
U.S. patents granted to Soviet residents, unassigned
U.S. patents granted to Soviet residents, assigned
Source: Author’s calculation. USPTO (2009), Hall, et al. (2001)
Table 3: U.S. Patents to Soviet Residents Matched to U.S.S.R. Inventor’s Certificates, 1959 – 1991
Unassigned Assigned
Matched to
Inventor's
Certificate
Number of patents
Share, matched records
Not Matched to
Inventor's
Certificate
Total
Total
557
0.75
190
0.25
747
1
Number of patents
Share, unmatched
records
5,027
1,125
6,152
0.82
0.18
1
Number of patents
Share, assignment
status
5,588
1,311
6,899
0.81
0.19
1
Source: Author’s calculation; USPTO (2009) and GPTO (2009).
Note: Matches are successful if there is a significant inventor-name and title match between patent and inventor’s-certificate
records. Assignment status is at time of issue. Soviet inventors own an unassigned patent, if there is no corresponding Soviet
patent or inventor’s certificate.
40
Table 4: Pooled Time-Series Regressions
Dependent variable: Share U.S. patents and ICs assigned to Soviet inventors
Explanatory Variables
Soviet GNP, log
R&D, lag
(Percent of GNP)
Year 1979
Year 1985
Year 1989
R&D x Year 1979
R&D x Year 1985
R&D x Year 1989
Time trend
Control for break year
F
N
Patents
1.232**
(0.519)
-1.090**
(0.486)
0.107
(0.089)
0.168**
(0.066)
0.101
(0.099)
1.194**
(0.538)
-1.779
(1.325)
1.421
(1.314)
Yes
Yes
16.05
29
ICs
1.661
(1.067)
-0.098
(0.346)
0.003
(0.068)
-0.012
(0.034)
-0.137*
(0.074)
0.212
(0.357)
-0.152
(0.207)
-0.096
(0.179)
Yes
Yes
7.62
26
Note: All continuous variables are first-differenced. Models are estimated as OLS models.
The Newey-West standard errors for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation are in parentheses.
Dummies are included for years of significant change in Soviet policies related to inventive activity and structural break
years.
Patent data are patents granted between 1963 and 2007, for which applications were made
between 1963 and 1991. IC data are ICs granted between 1977 and 1991, for which applications were made between 1960
and 1991.
Application years are used in estimation. An intercept is used in estimation but is not reported.
See text for data sources and definitions.
Coefficients marked with an asterisk (***) are significant at the 1 percent level of significance; (**), at the 5 percent level;
and (*), at the 10 percent level.
41