Patent Value in Cross-border R&D: Inventor Diversity and Ownership Effects

Global innovation increasingly unfolds within transnational R&D networks, facilitating the formation of multinational research teams and the cross-border reconfiguration of knowledge ownership. While these dynamics favour externalities, they complicate the attribution of inventive output to individual countries and obscure the contribution of domestic inventors. Using Portuguese patent data from 1989 to 2019, we examine how cross-border intra-organisational R&D influences inventive output and the role of domestic inventors in this. We measure patent value using a composite value index that captures multiple dimensions of patent quality. Our results show that 34% of total Portuguese patents were developed through cross-border R&D, of which 23% are foreign-owned, and 7% were developed exclusively by Portuguese inventors but not accounted as such. Nonetheless, cross-border intra-organizational teams produce more radical and higher-valued inventions than homogeneous teams, and foreign-owned patents consistently outperform domestic ones in value. These findings provide actionable insights for innovation policy and IP management. JEL Classification: O30, O31, O33, O34