International patents filed in 2005 highest in 3 decades

Patents filed in 2005 via the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which links 128 countries together, rose to a record number in the association’s 27-year history – due, says the organisation, to a better world economy and an electronic system that simplifies applications.

In 2005, over 134,073 PCT applications were been filed, representing a 9.4 per cent increase over the previous year, making it the highest number of patents filed since the inception of the treaty in 1978.

The five top users of the international patent system remained unchanged: U.S., Japan, Germany, France and the UK.

Countries that belong to the European Patent Convention collectively racked up a 34.6 per cent rate of growth, topping the list. They were followed by a 33.6 per cent growth from the US. Currently 31 European countries have joined the treaty.

During the year, the Republic of Korea has overtaken the Netherlands as the 6th biggest user of the PCT and China has moved ahead of Canada, Italy and Australia to take the position of 10th largest PCT user.

“Since 2000, the number of applications from Japan, Republic of Korea, and China, has risen by 162 per cent, 200 per cent and 212 per cent, respectively,” said WIPO, which oversees the work of the PCT.

Inventors and industry from the US represented 33.6 per cent (a 3.8 per cent increase over 2004) of all applications in 2005. Applicants from Japan, who unseated their German counterparts in 2003 for the number two spot, maintained their second place position with 18.8 per cent of the total number of applications, representing a 24.3 per cent increase.

Germany held onto the third position with 11.8 per cent of all applications in 2005, representing a 4 per cent increase, followed by France (4.1 per cent of all applications and a 6.6 per cent increase) and the UK (3.8 per cent of all applications and a 1.5 per cent increase).

The considerable overall growth in the number of international applications resulted not only from better economic conditions, but also from improved services and productivity within the PCT system, resulting particularly from the use of information technology, WIPO said.

The number of applications filed electronically increased by 106.9 per cent and filing on electronic media now exceeds paper filings. The PCT processed an average of 536 international applications per working day last year.  

In terms of companies, Philips Electronics was again the largest filer (an estimated 2,492 applications), followed by Matsushita (2,021), Siemens (1,402) , Nokia (898), Bosch (843), Intel (691), BASF (656), 3M (603), Motorola (580) and DaimlerChrysler (567). Among the 20 top filing companies, seven were from the US, four from Germany and four from Japan.

Developing countries

Meanwhile international patent applications received from developing countries in 2005 saw a 20 per cent increase over 2004, representing 6.7 per cent of all international applications filed. The list was topped by the Republic of Korea with 4,747 applications, followed by China (2,452), India (648), South Africa (336), Singapore (438), Brazil (283) and Mexico (136). Several developing countries saw double-digit increases in their use of the PCT, notably the Republic of Korea, China and Mexico. Developing countries make up 79 per cent of the membership of the PCT, representing 101 of the 128 countries that have signed up to the treaty to date.

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

“The growth rate in the filing of PCT applications has been especially significant during the last nine years,” said WIPO. “It took 18 years from the beginning of PCT operations in 1978 to reach 250,000 total applications, but only four years to double that figure (500,000), and another four to double it again (1,000,000).”