Subjects or Participants

The participants are emerging nations limited to Brics, with registered patents in public patent database renowned globally answering issues as: applicants names, patents quantities, international classifications, inventors’ names. Which it was possible with PatentScope® Database originated at Intellectual Property Organization - WIPO.

The subjects are patents of each country answering information about technological forecasting like numbers of Applications profile of Resident and Foreign patent offices by family of patents, technological profiles of these patents, of their inventors and of their investors. Which all these information permit to reflect and bringing the matter: in case of emerging countries, what is their landscapes about technologies and their players?

Apparatus

For this research, all technology in terms of equipment and software were generated with their own resources, as well as the analysis and generation of graphs with the help of Microsoft Excel Student and Coreldraw X7 Student, with support of map extracted from WIPO.

Design

All the statistical variables are discrete for the quantification of the patents of each country studied. This allowed to be traced the behavior of countries independently and acting together, and it was understandable that countries presented themselves as dependent variables. As for the independent variables, the profile of patent applicants, inventors, patent areas (classification) could be highlighted.

Brazil

The official office that deals with issues of intellectual property protection is the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) - autarchy linked to the Ministry of Economy - and that recognizes intellectual property as the fruit of inventiveness in relation to knowledge, technology and expertise INPI ( 201-), and comes corroborating what is internationally referenced by the World Intellectual Property Organization (^{WIPO, 2016}).

WIPO in its report highlights in the patent area the position (26) for Brazil and pending in analyses of patents around (196,354), although a reduction of this backlog by (6.8%) was observed in relation to the previous period (^{WIPO, 2019a}). As possible justifications, this can be found in ^{Sobral (2017}) that the process of internationalization has evolved the number of international deposits in the country, as well as the technological progress resulting from more complex inventions.

With this metric in the Brazilian backlog, the INPI expanded its staff by 1/4 of its old capacity in human resources for technological analysis, as well as improved electronic systems and internal process flows of its institute (INPI, 2018).

The Ministry of Economy recognized the world competitive scenario and the need to stimulate innovation, reacting with the goal of reducing the average analysis of each patent to 02 years, using the analysis of invention patent applications already made abroad, either for resident or foreign applications; adherence to the Madrid protocol for effectiveness in trademark protection and internationalization; briefness for priority examinations (group of elderly, micro and small businesses, green technology science institutions and participants of Patent Prosecution Highway - PPH) (^{VERDÉLIO, 2019}).

The INPI Business Program also stands out, broadening the list of INPI services, acting as a facilitating agent in the relations between national and foreign companies, universities, start-ups and research institutes, in order to generate new assets in intellectual protection (^{SILVA, 2020}).

Russia

With entry into the World Intellectual Property Organization in 1970, Russia has Rospatent as the official office for intellectual protection (^{ROSPATENT, 2018b}).

In your office, there is a continuous interest for efficiency in the evaluation of processes, optimizing a reduction in the deadlines from 2018 to 2019 by 30% in protections in general, with the processes to be optimized online (^{ROSPATENT, 2019a}).

In the internationalization of Russian intellectual protection, Rospatent has been holding since 1997 the Rospatent Science and Practice Conference event, with the participation of regional and international organizations such as WIPO, EPO, Eurasian Patent Organization and foreign states (^{ROSPATENT, 2019b}).

As for the profile of innovations registered in Russia internationally via WIPO, data are available in the general intellectual property panel of emerging countries (Table 1, 2 and Appendix 2).

India

WIPO participant since November 1973 (^{WIPO, 2019b}), India has a growing patent in recent years, highlighting the increase in the number of applications for patents by origin, particularly in the areas of information and communication technology (^{CORNELL UNIVERSITY; INSEAD; WIPO, 2019}).

His office, known as the Office of General control of Patents, Designs and trademarks, presents as legal framework the patent law since 1990 (^{THE PATENT ACT, 1970}), amended in order to take account of normative developments.

Above all, we can see India with strong growth in patents since 2016 (^{WIPO, 2019c}), being able to check more details in the results section of this work.

China

Member of the World Intellectual Property Organization since 3 June 1980, and being in force at the Paris Convention in 1985, China has the world's largest index of patent protection. (^{WIPO, 2018}).

The answer to this growth in China can probably be found through Smith e Leydesdorff (2012), when it reveals that the increase in innovation took place after the change of state-owned enterprises (EEs) have been privatised. In addition, there has been an increase in applications for protection in Chinese cities regarding the use of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) by private sector companies, which are more sensitive to IPR protection than state-owned companies.

Another factor that possibly justifies this growing rate of innovation is the investment in R&D, reaching the figure of 1.55 trillion, representing 2.1% of its GDP, so that part of these investments come from companies that contribute 78% of total spending on Innovation and Development. With this, China reaches 4th place in the world in citations of articles indexed to SCI, according to (BRICS, 2017).

In short, China seems to explain in large part the worldwide dissemination of scientific and technological innovation activities in the last two decades, although many other countries have contributed to this trend. But many low-income countries are systematically excluded from international innovation.

South Africa

The participation of the South African office at WIPO, took place with the agreement signed in 1967 which went into effect in 1975 (^{WIPO, 1975}).

The office of the acronym in English, CIPC - Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, presents itself as the Commission of Companies and Intellectual Property, and comes since 2013 with the adoption of patent applications and other electronic technologies in order to optimize the service of the growing demand for intellectual protection (^{CIPC, 2013}).

It is also found that the services for registration in intellectual protection of CIPC motivated its customers even more, adopting a strategy of reducing fees for the purpose of increasing records, thus demonstrating a greater interest in the increase of its technological indicators (Notice 36 of 2019 - Decrease of co-operative registration fee and amendment of constitution in terms of the amended co-ops act (no.6 of 2013), 2019).

It could be seen that South Africa still strives to make significant progress in the area of intellectual protection in front of the same markets on its continent. (^{Makhoba & Pouris, 2018}), and has adopted a strategic planning with proposed market value, making it potentially available, as can be enumerated with: a) Delivery program and easy access to CIPC; b) Programme to promote innovation and creativity; c) Programme of reputation and business standardization (^{CIPC, 2017}).

2.1. Requests for Intellectual Protection

Looking at the report of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, an increasing number of applications for intellectual protection for the emerging could be found, with the unusual point of the outlier of China potentially superior to the other countries, reaching over 8,15 million units in patents, making him world leader globally and among emerging countries, followed by Russia with (314251), India (212147), Brazil (65835) and South Africa with (20085) patents, as shown more graphically by Figure 1.

Figure 1 Accumulated patents in emerging Residents + Foreign and Regional (2009 a 2018). Source: Adapted from (^{WIPO, 2019a}, ^2019d, ^2019c, ^2019b, ^2019e). 

However, there is a strong characteristic related to these patents over the period when viewed in chronological detail by (Figure 2), when in the year of 2014 Russia presents strong decrease and recovery of growth in 2015 with later fall to the years after 2018. Resuming again strong growth from 2015 to 2018, appearing to be a general problem among patent offices in the matter of technological protections. While China, still being the outlier of this statistic, has not shown to have suffered shake-ups in its indices.

For India, it is worth highlighting the strong growth throughout the period for investment in intellectual protection, demonstrating a great effort of this country by its inventors, as well as an awareness of the importance of protecting its innovations. Moreover, it is worth highlighting the strong market by the population contingent that demands for various technological solutions. In order to compare its initial results with the most recent, according to the data presented, India started with 11,939 patents in 2009 and reached the mark of 30036 patents in 2018, showing in this contrast an increase of 251.57%.

In the case of Brazil, the protection of innovations remained practically constant, maintaining between 5423 and 7505 patents.

As for South Africa, it presented a quantitative index around 1964 to 2317 patents during all time.

Figure 2 Number of patents per period in emerging countries (2009-2018). Source: Adapted from (^{WIPO, 2019a}, ^2019d, ^2019c, ^2019b, ^2019e) 

In general terms, there is an increasing number of intellectual protection applications for emerging countries, observing just Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa during this period, when the amount of patents per year is analyzed (adding up your results per year), as can be seen from Figure 3, when it shows a trend line with R²=0.99, demonstrating that together they show a strong trend of technological growth in numbers of millions patents.

Figure 3 Accumulated of emerging patents per period (2009-2018). Source: Adapted from (^{WIPO, 2019a}, ^2019d, ^2019c, ^2019b, ^2019e) 

2.2. Intellectual Protection of Patent Offices Resident and Abroad by Patent Family

From this international indicator of Intellectual Property, it is worth noting that patents have been widely used as an indicator of innovation activity in recent decades, and that to measure the productivity of these activities in research and development, one must observe the absence of limitations pointed out by ^{Pavitt (1982}) and ^{Griliches (1990}), when many of the innovations are not patented, while others have several patent protections when applied in different territories, or the number of patents protecting the invention may differ between each country applied for (^{DECHEZLEPRÊTRE et al., 2017}).

Another relevant point to understand in this indicator of patents residing and abroad by family is that each protection exercised presents its usefulness for quantifying the technological diffusion that is taking place among these countries, and also with the minimization of data duplication. It is also possible to count the relationship of international interests regarding the invention to be protected for exploitation in the respective market of that country, or simply to be applied in use mode (^{DE RASSENFOSSE et al., 2013}). Thus, depending on the size of the family of patents in which there is representation in the territory, it is possible to observe a mensuration of size market, quantifying the appropriate technological value (^{HARHOFF et al., 2003}).

Analysing the important points raised about these indicators, it is possible to ask: what are the indexes, at least quantitative in a protection matrix among the emerging ones, and what can be evidenced with these numbers? And according to PatentScope (2020), it was possible to condense the quantitative in the period 2009 to 2018 in agree with Figure 5, resulting of Table 4 from Appendix II.

Figure 4 Protected resident/exterior patents per family, among emerging countries. Source: Database PatentScope(2020) 

Looking at the compiled data from the sum of the period of 2009-2018, it turns out that South Africa invests in protecting its technological assets much more internally (1550) to externally, indicating that outside its territory it is much more attractive to protect its innovations in markets. As for requests for protection abroad, this African continent nation has records in Chinese office with (1040) patent units, Indians (609), Brazilians (101) and finally in Russian markets (84).

China's innovation ecosystem actors presented a superiority in this internal quantitative patent protection (134489), presenting full leadership in these indicators also in the external market. And It places their investments in protections, mainly in the Indian neighbor market (3396), followed by Russia (1402), Brazil (1029) and South Africa (598), demonstrating a hierarchy of interests in these markets.

India visualizes its domestic market with great value (11107) in the protection of its innovations against the external market, but it respects the neighboring market of China (2600), and less investment in the protection of the Russian (181), African (164) and Brazilian (141) markets. It should be noted that all these external markets do not represent or want more than 2% of the quantity of resident patents protected.

Russia invests around 60% more in the protection of its patents within the China market (6436) in relation to its number of domestically protected patents (4145), while in the hierarchical order of investments in protection, it follows the Indian (649), Brazilian (189) and South African (185) markets mainly. The families of patents in Brazil present a statistic of importance in the external market mainly (4338), while internally it also presents a considerable index of this quantitative (2791), so that India is the second external market of greater interest (977), Russia (290), and South Africa (283) finally, and not less important.

Observing the general indicators of protection in this macro-environment of nations, one can possibly identify that the considerations of the factor - geographical proximity to the markets - attract more patent protection in general, except for China, since this huge Chinese market of protection attracts the interest of international patent registrations from the most distant countries, as in the case of Brazil.

From the data obtained, it is possible to illustrate this relationship of interests in Intellectual Protection resident and abroad through Figure 5, identifying the appropriate quantitative proportions.

Figure 5 Geography of Intellectual Protections in emerging countries and their resident and foreign holdings (2009 - 2018). Source: PatentScope database (2020); illustration adapted by Tadeu Tatum. 

The results achieved on the geographical factor with the vision of ^{Blomkvist; Drogendijk, (2013}) when it mentions that physical distance really is a factor explaining the path of internationalization of companies as a form of choice, as well as the flow and selection of markets in emerging countries, widely perceiving the power of patents protected by family on the axis of Russia - China - India.

In the case of China, although its market share in foreign patents is still a fraction of what is applied for in domestic patents, it is noted that there is a significant amount also in foreign countries, which has also been observed in the case of emerging countries (^{WUNSCH-VINCENT et al., 2015}).

The same authors also point out that China's patents are concentrated on specific technologies and on small companies, being mostly in the technological sectors, corroborating what will be seen in the item below in what is presented in Table 1, in the technological profiles of Chinese patents.

It is observed that African general indices are more suppressed compared to all other countries as we have seen, however, is to be emphasized research (^{Makhoba; Pouris, 2018}) that portrays South Africa with a different view, a look at specific areas in nanotechnology, biotechnology, climate change, energy and health, highlighting it in a more competitive environment against Brazil, Russia, India and China, even concluding that South Africa's production is the most prolific on its own continent, although the technologies investigated are not properly aligned with the priority areas of government policy.

^{Lubango (2020}) exposes the international networks of co-inventors among South Africa, Brazil and India for the production and dissemination of green international innovations, highlighting the linear correlations in India, followed by Brazil with the largest network of co-inventors and finally identifying the non-linearity for South Africa, by presenting a smaller network. However, it argues that co-inventor networks accelerate transnational exchanges of human capital and that it is worth adopting national and transnational industrial cluster and innovation policies at global levels to support sustainable production plans.

The Russian Government highlights the bilateral technical-military cooperation with China, aiming at maintaining the agreements on mutual protection of intellectual property, and ensuring their effective implementation in relation to previous agreements (^{ROSPATENT, 2018a}).

In the proposed study of Russia as the cooperation in the Brics relating to Science, Technology and Innovation, the authors have compiled indexes in priority areas, and realized that issues such as the advanced manufacturing and robotics, space systems and astronomical observations are fields of high importance and which require a lot of research and development - R&D, while areas of information communication technology - ICT - have a great importance and an average capacity for investments in R&D (^{SOKOLOV et al., 2019}).

Another important topic regarding this collaboration network among the emerging focus on Russia, is present: a) the focus for cooperation in the fields of nanotechnology and new materials; b) mutual benefit for win-win cooperation in ICT and advanced robotics and industrialization; c) and the leading role in space research and robotics (^{SOKOLOV et al., 2019}).

Patents: Technology profiles, inventors and investors (2010-2019)

Knowing the profiles of protection in patents with the highest rate of each nation, is possible to extract evidence that China holds the largest amount of intellectual protection with more than 19.8 million units, being outlier compared to other countries. And following in descending order, there is the participation of Russia with (1,197,097) patents, Brazil (788,878), India (538,465) and South Africa with (151,921) protections.

Taken from the whole period (2010-2019), the highest rate of protection for each country, was the year 2011, and a description of its results is worth noting. Note that in the general classification profile of the International Patent Code there is a clear evidence and predominance of the category (G06F) which is associated with - section G - Physics, subsection 06 - Computation; calculation; count; F - Electrical processing of digital data - dominated by the high quantitative degree of Chinese patents. Taking in general that all the productive potential in patents stands out for progress in the areas of Informational Technology and processing. While all other countries: Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, looking for intellectual property protection in the code (A61K) which is associated with the area of ​​- Human Needs, Health, Rescue, Recreation (A), highlighting the subclass Medical or veterinary science; Hygiene (A61) and specifically for the purpose for medical preparations, dental or hygiene (A61K) - leading to understand that companies with the profile in the health field in general, drugs or hospital have greater framework that quantitative when They present the companies Bayer AG (4497) in Brazil and Unilever PLC (3247) of South Africa.

With this, it could be seen in a general way that, in this time space of 2011 among these countries, 3/4 of patents were focused on the areas of information and processing - "cold, machine technology" - well highlighted by China, compared to 1/4 of patents for human and health issues to the rest of the countries.

Associated enterprises in the informational area are highlighted by the company's inventor Oleg Kyasenkov of Russia to (3481) patents, Qualcomm Incorporated in India (17381) and State Grid Corporation (63285) in China, in ascending order.

The countries of India, China and South Africa did not have the profile of its inventors their names, while Brazil stands out with inventions of the German Focke Heinz with 334 protections and Russian Oleg Kyasenkov with (33416) Patent units in Russia.

In the same period in 2011, stands out in ascending order of the quantitative South Africa (5108), Brazil (22,878), India (49,904), Russia (72,158) and China (839189).

Table 1 Technological Profile patents by countries for the highest rate achieved by each emerging 

	Country		Applicants		Inventors		Code IPC		Year of publication
	Name	Quant.	Name	Quant.	Name	Quant.	Name	Quant.	Name	Quant.
	Brazil	788878	BAYER AG	4497	FOCKE HEINZ	334	A61K	64793	2011	22878
	Russia	1197097	Oleg Kvasenkov (RU)	3481	Oleg Kvasenkov (RU)	33416	A61K	79637	2011	72158
	India	538465	QUALCOMM INCORPORATED	17381	NA	497	A61K	74789	2011	49904
	China	19888082	STATE GRID CORPORATION OF CHINA	63285	THE INVENTOR HAS WAIVED THE RIGHT TO BE MENTIONED	75662	G06F	783458	2011	839189
	South Africa	151921	UNILEVER PLC	3247		22915	A61K	36202	2011	5108

Fonte: PatentScope (2020)

Evaluating the general technological profiles of the countries as the applicants, inventors and protected areas, it can be understood at a glance according to Appendix III, the following data (Table 2).

The metrics of larger holdings, among the ten most, it has the following highlights: the profiles of companies that reveal, stand out by presenting profiles of multinational Productions. As for inventors, it can be extracted in a general way that Brazil for the most part is foreign; India and South Africa, all inventions are the result of external inventors, while for Russia and China the participation of inventors from their own country is observed.

For more detailed analysis and assessment is recommended to observe the Table 6 in Appendix 4.