Table 8. U.S. and Japanese shares of total patents granted in the United States 

 for selected technologies: 1975 and 1986 



[Percent] 



Selected technologies 



Lasers 



Teleconnmunications 



Steel and iron 



Internal combustion engines 



Semiconductor devices and manufacture 



Jet engines 



General purpose programmable digital computer systems 



Robots 



Machine tools— metalworking 



All technologies 



United States 



1975 



63 

 66 

 48 

 54 

 68 

 66 

 77 

 63 

 65 

 65 



1986 



50 

 52 

 37 

 28 

 57 

 60 

 69 

 50 

 51 

 54 



Japan 



1975 



14 

 14 

 18 

 17 

 13 

 4 

 5 

 20 



1986 



35 

 26 

 29 

 44 

 29 

 9 

 19 

 29 

 17 

 19 



SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment and Forecast, U S Patent and Trademark Office, unpublished data 



Japan's share of U.S. patents granted 

 has increased. The largest gains have 

 been in internal combustion en- 

 gines, which rose from 17 percent of 

 the patents granted in 1975 to 44 per- 

 cent in 1986; and lasers, which rose 

 from 14 to 35 percent. Other tech- 

 nological areas of extensive Japa- 

 nese patenting activity are 

 semiconductors, computer systems, 

 and machine tools. 



Japanese-origin patents are also 

 among the most highly cited U.S. 

 patents; in fact, Japan has one-third 

 more of highly cited patents than ex- 

 pected based on the total number of 

 U.S. patents granted to Japanese in- 

 ventors. Citations to earlier relevant 

 patents are assigned by U.S. patent 

 examiners to new patents, and as 

 such, define the boundaries of the 

 technology preceding and contrib- 

 uting to the new invention. A high 

 number of patent citations — re- 

 peated references to a technological 

 predecessor of a new patent — is (es- 

 sentially) the indicator of a very sig- 

 nificant invention. For the top 1 

 percent of the most highly cited U.S. 

 patents, Japanese patents account for 

 45 percent more of the top 1 percent, 

 most highly cited U.S. patents than 

 expected. The highest citation rates 

 for Japanese patents are in the au- 

 tomotive, semiconductor electron- 



ics, photocopying and photography, 

 and pharmaceuticals patent clas- 



ses. 



40 



industrial 

 productivity 



Recent assessments'" of Japanese 

 technology have observed that one 

 of Japan's strengths has been in ap- 

 plying technology to production 

 processes. One study indicates that 

 Japanese industries invest their R&D 

 much more heavily in improved 

 process technology than do their U.S. 

 counterparts, and notes that "pro- 

 cess R&D tends to have a bigger ef- 

 fect on an industry's own rate of 

 productivity increase than does 

 product R&D."« 



Japan has made rapid progress in 

 manufacturing productivity during 

 the past decade; manufacturing out- 

 put per worker-hour increased 68 

 percent from 1977 to 1986, com- 

 pared with a 26-percent increase in 

 the United States for the same pe- 

 riod (chart 30). In recent years, U.S. 



*Narin and Olivastro, op. dt. 



'See, for example, Lowell W. Steele and N. Bi^ce 

 Hannay, The Compelitwe Status of U.S. Industry: An 

 Ot'enneu' (Washington, DC: National Academy 

 Press, 1985). 



^-Edwin Mansfield, Industrial R&D in Japan and the 

 United States: A Cmnparative Study, unpublisfied pa- 

 per, 1987. 



Chart 30. Output per worker hour in manufacturing 



[Index: 1977 = 100] 



Hours 

 200 



200 



J \ L 



J I \ I I I I I 



J L 



1965 



'67 



'69 



'71 



'73 



•75 '77 

 Years 



'79 



'83 







'85 '86 



SOURCE: National Science Foundation, SRS. table B-27 



.-jwntwHHi 



34 



