Technological diversification and structural persistence in Peru's patent and utility model filings, 2000–2024
Abstract
Introduction Aggregate patent counts provide information on filing volume but do not reveal whether a national filing corpus is technologically concentrated, diversified, or structurally reordered over time. This study examines the International Patent Classification (IPC) composition of Peru's patent and utility model filing corpus and distinguishes distributional diversification from structural reordering. Methods We analyzed 32,966 IPC-classified patent and utility model applications filed before INDECOPI between 2000 and 2024, distributed across 131 primary IPC classes. An integrated descriptive patent analytics framework combined concentration, diversity, dominance, rank persistence, set overlap, distributional distance, cumulative hierarchy, legal-instrument robustness, and applicant-origin contextual indicators. Results The filing distribution became less concentrated and more even over time. Across predefined 5-year windows, mean annual HHI decreased from 0.220 in 2000–2004 to 0.072 in 2020–2024, while mean Shannon entropy increased from 3.670 to 5.022 bits. Mean Top-1, Top-3, and Top-10 shares also declined. Nevertheless, A61, C07, and A01 together accounted for 49.5% of the 2000–2024 panel. Spearman correlations across consecutive periods ranged from 0.887 to 0.941 in the fixed 131-class universe, while robustness checks using alternative class universes supported the same general interpretation, although with lower coefficients. Instrument-stratified analyses indicated that the diversification pattern was not solely attributable to combining patents and utility models. Discussion The results indicate diversification without full structural reordering. The study characterizes an office-based jurisdictional filing corpus before INDECOPI and should not be interpreted as direct evidence of domestic technological capability, patent quality, or innovation performance. The framework provides a reproducible approach for distinguishing broader IPC-classified filing participation from deeper changes in technological hierarchy.