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Abstract

Patent information - as a form of technology disclosure - serves an important function in business strategy as well as in industrial policy making. This study first discusses the role of patent information for technology disclosure before showing the rising importance of patents in Asia (Japan, Korea, China, India) as source of technological information. It demonstrates both the substantial increase of Asian patents in force from the 1980s to 2006 and the increase of Asian patent grants from the 1990s to 2006. Furthermore, Asian patent grants for every billion U.S. Dollar of the gross domestic product (in current prices of the period measured) are analyzed as is the ratio of patent grants to patent applications in Japan, Korea, China, and India. Analyses of the availability of and access to patent information in Asia demonstrate that patent information is easily accessible, while its relevance is hard to detect. In consequence, this paper argues that the increasing relevance of Asian patent information needs to be complemented with the provision of competitive databases that contain value-added patent information allowing for high quality search results.