Dual use inventions: identification and characterization using patent data

This study focuses on the spillover from the outcomes of military R&D to subsequent civil applications. We aim to identify the characteristics of those military innovations that are more likely to be exploited in civilian areas (i.e. dual use) and we build on previous literature to develop a methodology to identify such cases. Using both patent and citation data, we investigate country effects and invention-level characteristics that increase the likelihood to observe a military-to-civil knowledge spillover. We test these relationships by estimating probit, survival, and competing-event models on a large sample of military inventions filed between 2002 and 2012. Our results indicate that the incidence of dual use decreases during the period analysed and is heterogeneous across both technologies and countries. Military inventions having wider technological and geographical scopes are more likely to be cited by subsequent civil patents but military-to-civil spillovers occur later than military-to-military ones. Finally, the first dual use application of a military invention tends to appear within the country boundaries, suggesting that cross-border knowledge spillovers are not immediate. Our evidence is functional to the assessment of the potential indirect effects generated by the innovative activities of companies operating in the defence sector on the civilian sectors.