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7.6.4Conclusion
The figures in the previous chapters, show a mixed message. The WIR of 0.2 for Flemish patents ranks in the top 3 in an international comparison, but for the business and higher education sub-analyses, Flanders performs rather average.
There are two possible explanations for this paradox.
A first explanation may lie in the methodology used, namely in the differences in the geographical allocation of the partial figures. Indeed, for the Flemish patents, we assume the Flemish inventors in all patents with at least one Flemish inventor and/or applicant. For the allocation to Flanders of patents applied for by Flemish companies and by Flemish institutions of higher education, we assume only the address of the applicant and, in addition, we consider the gender distribution of all inventors involved, not just Flemish ones. Thus, the underlying basis of both tables is different.
A second possible reason relates to the composition of the Flemish patent portfolio: Companies accounted for about 73% of EPO patent applications in 2017. An international comparison (see Figure 6 in VARIO Advisory Report 30) showed that this is a relatively low percentage. For example, the share of patents applied for by companies in VARIO benchmark countries is higher than 90%. At the same time, that comparison showed that Flanders is at the top in terms of the share of patents associated with knowledge institutions (government/non-profit and higher education institutions). Because the WIR for patents associated with knowledge institutions is typically a lot higher than for patents applied for by companies (compare Figure 6 and Figure 7), Flanders thus ranks well in the main, although it ranks rather weakly for the two sub-analyses and even below the average of European member states for higher education institutions.
In any case, the WIR values are small. These results may therefore give rise to follow-up research questions: what thresholds keep female researchers from being among the inventors on a patent? And are these thresholds different among companies and knowledge institutions?