ASPI Enhances Critical Technology Tracker with Patent Data Analysis

Since its most recent update in June 2026, the Critical Technology Tracker has shown that China leads in 69 of 74 tracked technologies.

What ASPI added: patent-analysis capability across 20-plus technologies

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has expanded its Critical Technology Tracker (CTT) to include a new patent-analysis capability. The addition brings patent filings, granted patents and quality‑patent data into the tracker across more than 20 of the 74 critical technologies it monitors, and provides two decades of historical patent data so users can compare recent and longer‑term performance.

How patent data complements publication-based rankings

Before this update, the CTT’s publication rankings focused on the top 10 percent of the most highly cited research papers, drawing on Web of Science, ORCID and the Research Organization Registry. Patents add a different signal: they show where inventors and organisations are seeking intellectual property protection and commercial footholds. ASPI frames this combination as strengthening the CTT’s value as a predictive tool — “today’s research is potentially tomorrow’s capability.”

The CTT itself points to an illustrative case: “Iranian research, for example, has long pointed to the development of the strike drones that have been lighting up air defences across the Gulf in its war with the United States and Israel – an investment that the CTT highlighted long before the conflict.” Publication trends and patent activity, ASPI argues, together give a broader picture of where technological leadership may translate into operational advantage.

New metrics, head‑to‑head comparisons and category visuals

The latest CTT update introduces several analytical features intended to make patent data more actionable. Users can now view head‑to‑head country comparisons for patent filings, granted patents and quality patents across technology categories. New quality‑patent metrics aim to assess patent quality rather than raw quantity. Category‑level visuals provide high‑level insights across broad groupings of technology, and the tracker offers two decades of historical data to show trends over time.

Historical expansion: from a five‑year snapshot to 20 years and 74 technologies

The CTT launched in March 2023 tracking global research output and quality on 44 critical technologies over a five‑year period (2018–2022). Since then the project has expanded: it now covers 74 technologies and includes 20 years’ worth of data. The technologies tracked span defence, space, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cyber, advanced materials, energy and quantum — a scope intended to capture the fields “reshaping national security, economic resilience and global strategic advantage.”

What this means for policymakers, investors and institutional leaders

• Policymakers: The CTT provides a data‑driven way to see where research and patenting resources are clustered, helping identify national priorities and potential strategic vulnerabilities.
• Investors: Patent trends and quality metrics offer an additional signal for identifying emerging competitive shifts and where commercialisation efforts are most active.
• Institutional leaders: Universities, research organisations and procurement officials can use the combined publication‑and‑patent view to align investment and protection strategies with longer‑term capability trends.

Alongside the CTT, ASPI offers related analytic tools: the China Defence Universities Tracker and a new China Little Giants Tracker that maps more than 19,000 Chinese companies designated as national technology leaders. Those additions position the CTT within a broader suite intended to show how research performance, corporate designation and intellectual property protection together map onto strategic power.

The practical effect is straightforward: users now can move from citation counts to patents to ask not only which countries are publishing influential research, but which are filing and securing intellectual property on the technologies that matter. If publication and patent signals point in the same direction, the CTT gives a stronger indication of where future advantage may be concentrated. That convergence is already visible in the tracker’s June 2026 snapshot, which finds China leading in 69 of 74 technologies — a structural signal ASPI presents as central to how technological competition is unfolding.

Read the original ASPI announcement: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/aspis-critical-technology-tracker-expands-to-include-patent-data/