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Regional differences in the development of technology licensing markets can also be observed through payments and receipts of royalties of three regions.
A survey conducted by the European Patent Officer in 2004 found that spending on inward licensing was equivalent to 5.6% of spending on R&D for firms in the United States, 22.0% for firms in Japan, and 0.8% for firms in Europe respectively; royalty receipts amount top 6.0%, 5.7% and 3.1% of R&D spending in the United States, Japan and Europe, respectively.

These findings are generally consistent with results of an earlier survey by BTG, which found that spending on inward licensing during the 1990s was equivalent to 12% of R&D spending in the United States, 10% in Japan, and 5% in Europe (Gambardella, 2005). A more study, however, found that total inward-licensing in Japan remained about 3% to 4% of R&D spending between 1994 and 2002, while outward licensing expenditure increased from 0.06% to 0.14% of total sales revenues (Motohashi, 2005).

Licensing appears to be concentrated in high-technology sectors. In the OECD survey, respondents from the ICT sector were the most likely to report increases in outward licensing (about 80% of respondents), suggesting that licensing-out has become important as a source of revenue for ICT firms. In contrast, respondents from the pharmaceutical industry were most likely to report increases in inward-across all sectors, around 70% of respondents expected the importance of inward and outward patent licensing to grow in the next five year (Sheehan et.al. 2004).

A recent study in Japan found similar results with the pharmaceutical and ICT industries being the two dominant sectors for the share of inward and outward licensing between 1994 and 2002, and with smaller and younger firms using licensing more frequently than larger, established firms (Motohashi, 2005).

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