International Patent Filings Dipped 4.5% In 2009: WIPO

By Jocelyn Allison

Law360, New York (February 08, 2010) -- The number of international patent filings fell 4.5 percent in 2009, when sharp drops in the United States and other industrialized nations outpaced gains in a number of East Asian countries, the World Intellectual Property Organization said Monday.

Provisional data show that 155,900 international patent applications were filed under WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2009, down from about 164,000 applications filed in 2008, the agency reported.

The drop follows at least four years of gains in the number of international patent filings, and is more in line with levels from 2007, when 159,886 filings were made, WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry said

Despite the decline, which was attributed to the global economic downturn, officials said they were expecting worse. Gurry noted that the rate of decline in international filings was lower than what some countries had experienced in nation-specific filings.

“This is an indication of a broad recognition that it makes good business sense, whatever the economic conditions, to continue to protect commercially valuable technologies internationally,” he said.

Though the U.S. still accounts for the most international patent filings, the number of applications filed in 2009 dropped 11.4 percent, according to the report. Other industrialized countries to see their filings drop over the past year included Germany, with an 11.2 percent dip; the U.K., 3.5 percent; and Canada, 11.7 percent, it showed.

Several East Asian countries fared better, however. Japan saw its applications increase 3.6 percent and Korea increased 2.1 percent, WIPO said. China, meanwhile, became the fifth-largest source of international patents about 7,946 international applications, a 29.7 percent increase over the previous year, according to the data.

Japan's Panasonic Corp. led the filings in 2009 with 1,891 applications, pushing last year's leader, China's Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., into second place with 1,847 filings, the report said.

Companies with the next-highest numbers were Robert Bosch GmbH of Germany with 1,586 applications; Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands with 1,295 applications; and U.S.-based Qualcomm Inc. with 1,280 applications, WIPO said.

Four of the top 10 filers were Japanese companies: Panasonic, NEC Corp., Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha and Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha, according to the report.

The largest number of international applications from developing countries came from Korea, with 8,066, and China, followed by India, with 761; Singapore, with 594; Brazil, with 480; South Africa, with 389; and Turkey, with 371, the report showed.

The greatest declines by industry were in computer technology, 10.6 percent; pharmaceuticals, 8 percent; and medical technology, 5.9 percent, while the greatest growth was in microstructural and nanotechnology, 10.2 percent; semiconductors, 10 percent; and thermal processes and apparatus, 7.2 percent, according to WIPO.

The organization's PCT system allows inventors and companies to file for patent protection in several countries at once using a single application. The filings with the PCT system are only a small number of the patent applications filed every year, many of which are filed for one country only.