Tracking technology innovation trends: Mapping future prosperity of nations?

Despite the global economic downturn faced by the engineering and technology sector, and reports of steadily declining R&D budgets, world leading companies are still clearly dedicated to innovation and the generation of intellectual property. But in particular, it seems that Japanese technology firms – which have a policy of making long‐term investment in R&D and protecting that investment through patenting – understand better than most that patents are increasingly becoming a vital way of maintaining competitive advantage in the growing knowledge based economy.