Canada is one of the largest mining nations in the world, ranking among the top five countries in the global production of thirteen major minerals. Despite the economic strength of the sector, R&D, innovation, and commercialization remain challenges for the Canadian mining sector. With increasing environmental standards and regulations, companies operating in this sector are continually searching for technological solutions to advance sustainable mining. Patent data is an excellent starting point for understanding these innovative efforts as the information contained in patents reveals the specific technical knowledge embedded in the invention. This detailed information reveals who is patenting and what they are patenting, allowing for the identification of collaboration opportunities while avoiding costly duplicative research. The chapter provides a lens into the patenting effort in the Canadian mining sector, including trends, landscape maps and collaboration and is the result of a collaborative effort between the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO).

It is hard to overstate the significance of the mining industry’s contribution to the Australian economy but the narrative around mining is generally not focused on the technology, innovation or intellectual property that drives the industry today. This chapter aims to perform an investigation of the mining sector using patents to determine innovation trends and who is undertaking this work: the operating miners, publicly funded entities or the mining, equipment, technology and services (METS) firms? This chapter uses Australian firm-level data in combination with the patent database developed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to detail the patent-filing activity and innovation areas in the mining sector. The ultimate aim is to determine whether Australians are innovators in the field, creating and exporting technology, or if Australian miners simply use other companies’ tools and innovations to dig their resources out of the ground.