Analyzing worldwide patent filings over the last 20 years: A Report by PatSeer

Analyzing patent filing trends at a macro level provides key insights on technology, and business competence across industries and sectors. Analysis of domestic patenting activity helps give a picture of the research and technological development being done in a country while an increase in foreign applicant filings in a particular domain can indicate the existence of a large market for the technology.

Gridlogics has released a new PatSeer report covering trend analysis of worldwide patent filings over the last 20 years. In this report Gridlogics has analyzed worldwide patent filings across different patenting authorities.  All published patent applications up to April 2015 have been included although new filings usually get published 12-24 months later for many countries.

Analyzing macro level trends over large time durations is usually difficult and time consuming since most patent search systems pose an upper limit on the number of records that can be analyzed.  However in this analysis PatSeer has not imposed any limits on the data allowing for the discovery of insights across a long time horizon. In this report, Gridlogics has analyzed 27.8 Million patent applications published worldwide during the period of January 1995 to April 2015.

The report is divided into three broad segments:  Global trends (All authorities), Country based trends (Covering US, China, Germany, Japan, France, Britain and India) and trends covering the European Patent Office (EPO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

For each authority the report lists top applicants – by total, both domestic and foreign, Technology domain trends, and Organization type (Firm/Institute/Government/Individual).

Some of the insights from the report include:

• Filing patterns shows a strong correlation with economic indicators. From 1995 there was steady growth in patent applications till 2001. The periods 2002-2004 and 2009-2010 had little or no growth with some years also reporting a decline during the same period – see figure below
• The Chinese Patent Office (SIPO) has accounted for 31% of the total increase in applications in the last two years
• Asian companies account for more than 40% of all applications
• The fields of Computer Technology, and Electrical Machinery accounted for the most growth in patent applications over the last 5 years
• Individuals hold a large percentage of new filings in the United States as compared to any other authority
• Percentage of non-resident applications is growing year-over-year in the US, and currently only 3 US companies remain in the Top 10 list: IBM, Microsoft and GE. Japanese companies dominate the foreign filers although Chinese companies are catching up quickly. Chinese filings in the US are mostly concentrated in ICT, Digital Communications, Computer Technology and Nanotechnology domains.
• The world’s leading telecommunication companies actively protect their innovations in India. Qualcomm has filed maximum number of patent applications in India accounting to 7,241 applications followed by Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, LG and Research in Motion. Growth of non-resident applicants is far more than that of the resident applicants at the Indian Patent Office. After closely analyzing the data it is inferred the Qualcomm entered the Indian market only after 2005, but its applications has doubled in the last five years.

The full report is available for viewing here: http://patseer.com/2015/08/worldwide-innovation-filing-trends-1995-2015/

By studying worldwide patent filings trends associated with global economic, and technological development can be discovered. This new report from Gridlogics reinforces the widely held belief that recently emerging economies have become highly competitive in their own countries and their organizations are aggressively protecting their innovations globally. It was also found that Computer-Related technology continues to be the most patented area followed by Electrical Engineering, Organic Fine Chemistry and Telecommunications.

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