1 Brazilian innovation paradox: scientific production and patent performance Valéria Delgado Bastos a Jacob Frenkel b ABSTRACT The main purpose of this paper is to characterize the existence of a potential paradox between scientific production, through technical and scientific publications in specialized journals, and the evolution of patent applications in Brazil, particularly by residents. The literature records situations where the evolution of these indicators can occur asymmetrically or even characterize a paradox, such as the known European paradox and Swedish paradox. Fragkandreas (2015)s review of these two notorious cases serve as a reference to the analysis of the Brazilian one. As the main concern is the identification and characterization of a possible paradoxical situation between scientific publications and patent applications, the basic methodology used was the identification of the main quantitative variables to be related, its dimensions and international comparisons, submitted to data descriptive statistical treatment. All correlations presented for the sample of 39 countries had the significance of their coefficients tested at 95% probability. The statistical results show the existence of great differences in the performance of scientific production and patent applications by residents in Brazil. Besides, top patent applicants are universities and public research institutions, not companies, fact induced partially by the recent Brazilian legislation. Although the Brazilian legislation to encourage research and innovation follow the same lines of developed countries laws, it induces this bias towards a greater participation of the universities and evidences, in absolute and relative terms, a low propensity of the companies to make patent applications in the Country. Patents are fundamental instruments in the market competition among companies and the evidence of expressive leadership of the educational and research institutions - largely a result of the legal arrangement inspired by the US Bayle-Dole Act - creates a bias with unpredictable results in terms of innovation. Other particular results are a greater intensity in patent applications by residents in areas which strongly differ from the technological waves of the advanced countries and the potential influence of the share of foreign capital in gross national product (GNP) on R&D development. Keywords: Innovation policy evaluation. Intellectual property rights. Patents. Scientific publications. Introduction According to Fragkandreas (2015), paradoxes are present in some innovation studies and usually attributed to a set of anomalous observations, such as expressive investments in innovation that lead to insignificant economic results in terms of a Retired economist at the BNDES, currently a research associate at the Business Economics Group of the Economics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IE / UFRJ) (e-mail: vdb9@hotmail.com). b Retired adjunct professor at IE-UFRJ, currently a research associate at the IE / UFRJ Business Economics Group (e-mail: jafrenkel@gmail.com).