International Patent Filings Recover

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

15 February 2011

International patent filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), after an unprecedented fall in 2009, started to rise again last year, with a continued decline in filings from the United States more than matched by a surge in filings from Asia.

In 2009, patent filings under the PCT had fallen by almost 5% in 2009 for the first time since they were introduced in 1978. However, even in that year, while US filings had remained in top place numerically, they fell by some 11.4%, while China’s rose by almost 30%, albeit from a low base at around one-fifth of US patent filings.

Last year, overall PCT filings, at 162,900, had seen a 4.8% increase and had almost regained the ground lost in 2009. However, US patents again experienced a fall – 1.7% in 2010 – while Chinese companies registered a further 56.2% rise, and at a total of over 12,300 filings were then more than one-quarter of US filings of nearly 44,900.

Filings by South Korea (+20.5%) and Japan (+7.9%) also increased in 2010, offsetting a mixed performance in European countries. Japan remains the second largest user of the PCT system with 32,150 international applications, followed Germany (+2.2%, 17,150). China (12,300) overtook the Republic of Korea (9,700) as the fourth-ranked PCT filing country.

“Overall PCT filings recovered from the economic crisis-induced drop in 2009, almost reaching their 2008 level,” said WIPO Director General, Francis Gurry. “The fast growth rates from East Asia reflect acceleration in the geographic diversification of innovative activities. This trend has many implications, not least an increased linguistic diversity of the technology that patent offices use as a basis for determining whether an invention is patentable.”

In fact, the Japanese company, Panasonic Corporation (2,150 applications) kept the top spot in the list of PCT applications published in 2010, followed by Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE Corporation (1,850), and Qualcomm Incorporated (USA, 1,650). A second Chinese company - Huawei Technologies (1,500) - occupied the fourth rank, followed by Philips Electronics (Netherlands, 1,400), Robert Bosch (Germany, 1,300), and LG Electronics (South Korea, almost 1300).

The digital communication industry saw the fastest growth (17.3%, 10,500 published applications) in 2010. This technical field accounted for the largest share of total PCT applications published in 2010 (up from the third largest share in 2009). Almost every other field of technology experienced declines or modest growth. The sharpest decline in patenting was seen in the field of telecommunications.

Recommended