Dear Readers,
This week we take a look at five graphs on Patents the world over. Contrast it with changes in India. We also present a change in the rankings of GII in India where improvements in IP protection is important for positive change in the rankings of countries. In the next few weeks we breakdown the total IP protection data including Copyright, Trademark, Designs, Geographic Indicators.
Intellectual Property protection awareness and utility has been increasing every year. Total applications of Intellectual property right around the world filed 24.86 million of Industrial design, Patent, Trademark, and Utility model applications which increased by 12.7 per cent in 2020 from the previous year. Highest applications were from Trademark, with about 69.2 per cent in 2020, followed by Patent 13.2 per cent, Utility models at 12.1 per cent, and Industrial design at 5.6 per cent.
Asia received 2.18 million (66.6 per cent of the total) patent applications filed worldwide in 2020, an increase of 4 per cent over last year. Since 2011 Asia has continued to dominate the patent applications. There have been changes within the Asian economies. North America, Europe, LAC, Oceania, and Africa received 6.32 lakhs, 3.58 lakhs, 0.52 lakhs, 0.35 lakhs, and 0.16 lakhs patent applications filed worldwide in 2020. A decrease of 4 per cent (-0.26 lakhs), 2 per cent (-0.06 lakhs), 7 per cent (-0.04 lakhs), 2 per cent (-0.01 lakhs), and 6 per cent (-0.01lakhs), respectively from the previous year.
3.27 million patent applications filed in 2020. This represents a 2 per cent annual growth over the previous year. China was the main key driver of the increase in the global total and received around 96,498 higher applications in 2020. Republic of Korea (7,784), India (3,144), China, Hong Kong SAR (5,024), and the United Kingdom (1,399) also received considerably higher applications in 2020.The top 10 countries contributed above 90 per cent of the total patent applications worldwide. China’s patent office alone received 46 per cent (14.97 lakh) of the applications, followed by the United States of America (18 per cent/ 5.97 lakh), Japan (9 per cent/ 2.88 lakh), the Republic of Korea (7 per cent/ 2.27 lakh), and the European Patent Office (5 per cent/ 1.80 lakh).India’s patent office received 2 per cent of about 0.57 lakh patent applications. China’s share of the world total has increased considerably over the past ten years – from 24 per cent in 2011 to 46 per cent in 2020. There is also a growing consensus that some Chinese patents might be spurious. "One Chinese patent expert stated rather bluntly that only 10 percent of China’s patents have market value and that probably 90 percent of them are “trash.” What Do China’s High Patent Numbers Really Mean?"
Resident applicants filed 2.30 million (70.3 per cent), while non-resident applicants filed the remaining (29.7 per cent) world wide in 2020. Resident share increased from 69.2 per cent in 2019 to 70.3 per cent in 2020 with a growth of 3.3 per cent, the Non-resident share decreased from 30.8 per cent to 29.7 per cent with a reduced growth of 2.2 per cent from 2019 to 2020.
Almost 1.60 million of patents were granted worldwide with an increase of 6 per cent over last year in 2020. China (5.30 lakh, 33.3 per cent of total grants) granted the highest number of parents in 2020, followed by the USA (3.52 lakh/22.1 per cent), Japan (1.79 lakh/11.3 per cent), Korea (1.35 lakh/ 8.5 per cent) and the European Patent Office (1.35 lakh/ 8.4 per cent). India issued 11.8 per cent more patents in 2020 than in 2019. China (17.1 per cent), Korea (7.2 per cent), Brazil (86.4 per cent), and Australia (4.5 per cent) also noted more patents granted in 2020.
India remained its rank at seven positions in 2020 and this was its fifth successive year of growth. Also, 2020 was the fifth successive year of growth in Brazil. The USA issued a declined growth of 0.7 per cent, Japan (0.30 per cent), the EPO (3.0 per cent), Russia (15.3 per cent) and Canada (3.3 per cent) grants in 2020. Japan and Canada have continuously declined in their number since 2017.
In India there has been a marked improvement in IP protection and it can be seen in positive change in the Global Innovation Index rankings. However the societal impact of innovation, and IP protection has to be made more cohesive. In the next few weeks we will be working on breaking down the economic implications of IP protection for MSME, and startup's from tech to creative economies.
IP Wave this week has been written by Satyabrata Sahoo, Divyansh Sehgal, and Data Design by Raghav Sibal. Thank you for reading.
