Biopharma technologies follow a distinctive path. They started with adoption lags 5 percent faster than average, improving steadily until the early 2000s, when they peaked at 10 percent faster. However, this trend reversed in the early 2010s, reaching a peak of 25 percent slower For the past half century, the technological knowledge adoption lag has omitted due to citation data truncation. For more details see the Technical annex. Source: WIPO (based on EPO Patstat, 2025 Autumn edition),https://www.wipo.int/wipr. Advances in digital technologies can explain the faster diffusion. This long-term trend can through online databases that offered automatic translation into multiple languages. economy.18 This new period features accelerating and unprecedented speeds at which knowledge gets created, shared and accumulated. Distance still matters, but less than before. Both research theory and evidence confirm that distance affects knowledge diffusion. Knowledge spillovers occur more easily when the distance adoption lags between national and international patent citations. As expected, patent citations happen faster within national boundaries than across them. However, the international gap is disappearing. Since the late 1980s, this gap has been closing steadily. The difference peaked in 1988, when the average international adoption lag was 12 percent slower than the average national adoption lag. Since then, the gap has reduced significantly. By the early 2010s, the difference was only around 5 percent and by 2020 it over time. The same technological advances that have shortened overall adoption times have