IP Trend in Recent Years Based on World Intellectual Property Indicators 2022

WIPO publishes World Intellectual Property Indicators, which analyze IP activity around the globe, every year. Based on the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2022, let’s look at the IP trends around the year of 2021 (all graphs and data from World Intellectual Property Indicators 2022).

A1 shows the trends in patent application filings worldwide from 2007 to 2021.  It is interesting that 2019, prior to the pandemic, experienced a decrease in filings.  During the pandemic, the growth rate showed gradual improvement from the decrease in 2019 but was still smaller than in 2018.

A3 shows the trends in patent grants worldwide from 2007 to 2021.  The growth rate for patent grants does not appear to be affected much by the pandemic. However, the patent applications filed during the pandemic will likely not reach grant until a few years after filing.

A6 and A12 shows the trends in patent applications and patent grants for the top five offices.  For filings, China had a dip from 2018 to 2019 and rebound after 2019, the US had a slight decrease from 2019, Japan appeared to be on a continual downward trend from around early 2000s, and Korea and EPO both increased.  For grants, the US and EPO had smaller decreases, China and Korea increased, and Japan has been on a steady decline.

The decrease in filings in 2019 seemed to be affected by the drop of filings in China and the US.

 

Besides the trends in patent applications and grants, there is data showing published patent applications worldwide broken down by field of technology in 2010, 2015, and 2020.

 

One interesting field of technology was “IT methods of management.”  It only had 2.5% of share of total in 2020, but its average growth from 2010 to 2020 was 13.0%, which is the highest among all the technology categories.

In electrical engineering, “computer technology” had the highest share of 10.2 % in 2020, and the average growth was 9.6% from 2010 to 2020, which is comparatively high.  Both the U.S. and China had this field of technology as the highest share (12.2% of share in the U.S. and 10.0% of share in China).

Electrical Engineering maintained its largest share of total among the fields of technology for the past decade (33% in 2010, 30.4% in 2015, and 32.7% in 2020).  Considering the rapid growth of AI-based technology, the number of patent applications in the field of “IT methods of management” may show higher growth in the coming few years.