North East Asia Showed Exceptional Patent Growth In 2005

by Mary Swire, for LawAndTax-News.com, Hong Kong

07 February 2006

According to figures recently released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, in 2005, the Republic of Korea overtook the Netherlands as the 6th biggest user of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), and China dislodged Canada, Italy and Australia to take the position of 10th largest PCT user.

Last year, according to WIPO, over 134,000 PCT applications were filed, representing a 9.4% increase over the previous year.

The five top users of the international patent system remained unchanged, namely: United States of America, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

For the second year running, however, the most impressive rates of growth came from north east Asia – namely, Japan, the Republic of Korea and China, which between them accounted for 24.1% of all international applications, compared to 34.6% from the countries party to the European Patent Convention and 33.6% from the United States of America.

“The rate of growth from Japan, Republic of Korea and China continues to be exceptional, reflecting the rapidly expanding technological strength of those countries. Since 2000, the number of applications from Japan, Republic of Korea, and China, has risen by 162%, 200% and 212%, respectively,” observed Francis Gurry, WIPO Deputy Director General, who oversees the work of the PCT.

The top ten users of the PCT from developing countries in 2005 included: Samsung Electronics, (Republic of Korea), LG Electronics (Republic of Korea), Huawei Technologies (China), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India), Ranbaxy Laboratories (India), LG Chem (Republic of Korea), Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (Republic of Korea), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (Singapore), ZTE Corporation (China) and NHN Corporation (Republic of Korea).

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