Pattern of patent-based environmental technology innovation in China

Technology innovation benign to environmental preservation is one of the key strategies to address sustainable development. Understanding the pattern of environmental technology innovation in a country is necessary for making policies and decisions in environment management. Temporal and spatial distribution of environmental patents was analyzed to identify innovation capability of environmental technologies in China. In terms of features the patents were classified into invention, utility model (performance improvement) and design. The patents belonged to the individuals, enterprises and research institutes in terms of ownership. Through analyzing the pattern of environmental patents by features and ownership, it was found that individual-owned patents and utility model patents accounted for the biggest percentage of all the environmental patents applied by the domestic applicants. Eastern provinces had the majority of environmental patents. The cluster analysis showed that invention patents and enterprise-owned patents were concentrated in the eastern provinces. In general, the innovation capability of environmental technologies in the east is strongest among the regions. Though it had been improved in the last two decades, the percentage of invention patents was still small and enterprises did not play the most important role in innovation. Applications of environmental patents increased gradually but had a declining share of all the patents in the last two decades. The innovation capability of environmental technologies in China is still not strong on a global perspective. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.