Over two decades, Portugal registered 69 patent families in blue bioeconomy with clear commercial orientation, including protection in the United States and China. However, 94% of these technologies never moved beyond the laboratory validation stage. Only 6% – four families out of 69 – reached a maturity level corresponding to operational demonstration or functional prototype.

This is the central picture of A Retrospective for Decisions – Blue Bioeconomy Portuguese Patent Signals 2004–2024, the first systematic study of Portuguese inventive activity in the sector, produced by Marta Santos and Ana Braga, of B2E CoLAB.

Real growth, incomplete transition

The data shows an unmistakable growth trajectory: until 2014, activity was sporadic. From 2015 onward, the curve clearly inflects, with a peak between 2016 and 2019, and 2023 recording the highest value of the entire historical series, with 10 patent families. The protection strategy is internationally ambitious: 31 families via PCT, 20 via the European route, with the US (25 families) and China (13) as the main destinations outside Europe.

When technological maturity is assessed using the TRL scale, however, the picture changes: 81% of families sit at TRL 4 or TRL 5 tested in the lab, but never demonstrated under real conditions. The vast majority of innovations remain stuck in the “valley of death” between the lab bench and the market.

“Portugal has shown, over 20 years, real and growing scientific capacity in blue bioeconomy. What the data now shows us is that the country is stuck in a transition it cannot complete: it knows how to research, it knows how to protect internationally, but it still doesn’t have the mechanisms to bring these technologies to market. This isn’t a problem of ideas, it’s a structural problem,” says Marta Santos, Head of Technology Transfer at B2E CoLAB and co-author of the study.

What’s missing and what to do

The study identifies the concrete bottlenecks that explain the gap between TRL 5 and TRL 6/7: a lack of shared pilot and demonstration infrastructure, slow licensing and regulatory compliance procedures, and financing instruments that are inadequate for the scale-up phase.

Based on this diagnosis, recommendations are proposed along two axes. For the public sphere, the priority is to create the conditions for TRL 5 technologies to advance, through shared pilot infrastructure, regulatory support, and co-financing for scale-up. For the private sector, the fastest path is to establish partnerships around patent families that are still active or pending, and to explore the public-domain portfolio as a reservoir of open innovation.

The timing is favorable: the Blue Bioeconomy Pact, funded by the PRR (Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan), and the National Strategy for the Sea 2021–2030 represent a window of funding and policy direction directly aligned with the bottlenecks identified. Portugal arrives at this moment with real assets. What’s missing are the instruments of execution.

Access the full report: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19856121