International patenting strategies in ICT.

We study the drivers of international patent applications in ICT technologies by non-residents. We construct bilateral measures of foreign patent applications for all countries active as both a source of patents and a destination of applications filed between 1990 and 2007 to any patent office in the world. Despite the global character of the ICT industry, applicants from different regions follow different patenting strategies, only Japanese and US applicants are exceptionally active in seeking for patent protection in the majority of world markets. Applying a gravity model to explain the determinants of seeking patent protection in foreign markets, we find that economic and inventive capacity of a country attracts foreign patent applications.