Innovation in times of Covid-19

TL;DR

This study analyzes how the Covid-19 pandemic affected innovation by examining patent application data, revealing a surge in direct relevance patents and shifts in technological focus during the first year of the pandemic.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to quantify Covid-19's impact on innovation using patent data, distinguishing between direct and indirect relevance and analyzing technological fields.

Findings

Direct Covid-19 relevance patents increased significantly in the first year.

No significant change in indirect Covid-19 relevance patents.

Certain technological fields like human necessities and chemistry showed strong growth.

Abstract

Did the Covid-19 pandemic have an impact on innovation? Past economic disruptions, anecdotal evidence, and the previous literature suggest a decline with substantial differences between industries. We leverage USPTO patent application data to investigate and quantify the disturbance. We assess differences by field of technology (at the CPC subclass level) as well as the impact of direct and indirect relevance for the management of the pandemic. Direct Covid-19 relevance is identified from a keyword search of the patent application fulltexts; indirect Covid-19 relevance is derived from past CPC subclass to subclass citation patterns. We find that direct Covid-19 relevance is associated with a strong boost to the growth of the number of patent applications in the first year of the pandemic at the same order of magnitude (in percentage points) as the percentage of patents referencing Covid-19. We find no effect for indirect Covid-19 relevance, indicating a focus on applied research at the expense of more basic research. Fields of technology (CPC mainsections) have an additional significant impact, with, e.g., mainsections A (human necessities) and C (chemistry, metallurgy) having a strong performance.