Talk of the trilateral IP offices – in Japan, Europe and the US – could soon be replaced by discussions of the big five: the JPO, the EPO, the USPTO plus Korea's KIPO and China's SIPO, according to a survey of patenting trends released by WIPO yesterday (Monday).
Together, these five offices accounted for 75% of all patents filed and 74% of patents granted worldwide in 2004, the last year for which complete statistics are available.
"The implication is that the Republic of Korea and China will become more prominent in discussions regarding the patent system," said Francis Gurry, deputy director of WIPO.
He said that the growth in filings in the two jurisdictions means that they will be keen to ensure that the international patent system functions well. "I think they will be sympathetic to trilateral proposals to create the conditions for greater work sharing through increased harmonization."
Gurry said that the growth in filings from Korea and China also has implications for how offices search prior art in non-European languages. Around one quarter of patent applications are now written in Japanese, Chinese or Korean.
"For over 200 years people have been used to technology being generated in European languages. Now there is a major shift and the whole world has to take this on board and discuss how they are going to deal with it," he said.
WIPO is working on a terminology database that will allow applicants to search PCT applications for key words in other languages. An automatic translation program will then give them enough information to help determine whether to carry out a full translation. Gurry says the new system may be up and running next year. In addition, WIPO member states are discussing a proposal to allow PCT applicants to pay for a supplementary search in specific languages.
In just 20 years, China has become the fifth largest patent office in the world, measured by the number of patent applications filed. Patent filings by Chinese residents grew more than five-fold between 1995 and 2004 to reach 65,786. Korea is now the fourth largest patent office, with patent filings by residents growing threefold between 1994 and 2004.
WIPO says that for every dollar of GDP, Japan and Korea file five times as many patents as industrialized countries in Europe and North America. The report analyzes patent intensity indicators by weighing the number of patents by different measures of country size, including population, GDP and R&D expenditure.
The survey shows that smaller economies such as Australia, New Zealand, Finland, and Denmark have above average rates of patent filing. East European countries such as the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus also have high rates of patent activity when compared with total GDP and R&D expenditure.
But patent ownership is more concentrated still, with almost half of the patents in force in 2004 owned by the world's two biggest economies. Japanese residents owned 29% of all patents in force, with US residents taking another 20%.
The number of patent applications filed worldwide has almost doubled in the past 20 years, rising from 884,400 in 1985 to 1,599,000 in 2004.
