At the Lissabonner EU Summit the Council of Ministers decided that the research policies of EU member countries would undergo a systematic comparison. One element of this comparison forms a benchmarking process for the four key topics: (1) Human Resources in Research and Development, (2) Public and Private Research and Development Investment, (3) Scientific and Technological Productivity, and (4) Affects of Research and Development on Competitiveness and Employment. For each of these key themes, an international group of experts was called in to undertake the tasks of scientifically monitoring the development of the benchmarking indicators, to test the declarative competency of the individual indicators, and to make suggestions for new goal-oriented benchmarking indicators. Within the scope of this entire process, the ZEW is part of the team working on the third topic, and is thereby particularly concentrated on the possibilities of an international comparison analysis of technological productivity.The closing reports of the groups were published in fall 2002.The ZEW especially emphasised, the the "patent-based" indicators used so far by the European Comission are less practical and that so called "triad-patents" should be used in the future.