Today the Atlantic is reporting in an interesting article about the regional growth of patent filings in the United States. The article segregates the distribution of high-tech industries in the US by number of patents issued, an important measure of regional economic growth and technology commercialization. The data, provided by the Martin Prosperity Institue in Toronto shows that the classic industrialized regions of the US including Pittsburgh and Detroit have fallen precipitously off the map, while unsurprisingly, regions like Silicon Valley, CA and Houston, TX show significant growth in intellectual capital. New York state saw large growth in the 1990’s but has since declined in overall patent filings. With the development of new technology commercialization programs at the university centers such as the New York State Center for Biotechnology at Stony Brook University, hopefully we will begin to see growth in terms of new patents issued and licenses granted to private industry which would indicate true commercial growth. I would be extremely interested to see the distribution of patent filings by industry such as the computer software development, electrical engineering, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sectors.
