This paper examines the relationship between the technological regimes (Nelson and Winter 1982) and the technological catch-up, comparing performance of 10 countries using U.S. patent data. This study extends Park and Lee (2006: ICC) which examined the cases of Korea and Taiwan. It takes the new question of what differentiate more successful catch-up (in East Asia or Korea and Taiwan) from less successful (or next tier) catch-up. A total of 8 next tier catching-up countries are selected: Malaysia, Thailand, China and India; Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. It finds that while the first 2 show higher performance in shorter cycle time sectors, but the next 8 show lower performance in short cycle sectors. This finding indicates two faces of leapfrogging argument (Perez & Soete), such that emergence of new technological paradigms or cycles may permits leapfrogging or act as additional barriers to the late-comer without strong absorption capacity. We also finds that Latin 4 are found to be doing well in scoring patents in short cycles sectors but weaker in continuously filing more patents in these sectors, compared to the Asian 4. This pattern implies no specialization into advantageous sectors by the Latin 4.