Country Index-itis

Too many country indices out there. Just in the last few days I saw the following indices:

Global Peace Index (2014 version)

Good Country Index (2014, table from the Economist)

I´m questioning whether these indices have any real uses.

Separately, it seems they all end up with the same results with the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and Canada/Australia/New Zealand in the top 10.

Patent Registration by Latin American Inventors and Applicants - Follow-up

In an earlier post, we looked at patent registrations by Latin American investors and applicants. Earlier this week there was an article in one oh Chile´s leading newspapers (El Mercurio) analying the same topic. While the results are broadly consistent, details differ substantially. Our assumption is that the main reason for the differences are the use of a different database: EPO in our case, INAPI (Instituto Nacional de Propiedad Industrial, the Chilean patent office) in the case of "El Mercurio".

We will only provide an update of the EPO numbers in the beginning of 2015.