BENGALURU: India made significant strides in patent filings, encouraging more inventors to pursue their innovations. Patent applications recorded a fourth consecutive year of growth, reaching a record high of 3.5 million, with the residents of China, South Korea, the US, Japan, and India being the main drivers of growth, according to the World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) 2024 report.
Patent applications worldwide showed consistent growth over the past four years, following a 3% downturn during the peak of the pandemic. China led the 2023 expansion with an additional 57,830 patent applications compared to 2022, followed by South Korea with 15,628 more submissions. The US contributed 12,682 extra applications, while Japan and India added 9,040 and 8,734 applications respectively.
India recorded a remarkable growth rate of 15.7%, marking its fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth. According to WIPI data, domestic patent applications contributed 55.2% of all patent submissions to India’s IP office. Over the past decade, India’s IP office has witnessed the most substantial shift in the proportion of resident versus non-resident applications.
The share of domestic patent filings has risen dramatically to 55.2% in 2023 from 24.8% in 2013, the report showed. Last year marked a significant milestone as Indian residents submitted the most number of patent applications to the country’s IP office for the first time.
WIPI’s data showed China demonstrated notable progress in its resident patent-to-GDP ratio, which grew to 4,875 last year from 4,030 in 2013. India also experienced substantial advancement, with its ratio climbing from 144 to 381 during the same period. Both nations’ resident patent filings increased more rapidly than their GDP growth over this time.
However, the three nations known for their high patent-to-GDP ratios — Germany, Japan, and the US — have showed a steady decline in these figures over the last ten years.
A majority of 13 of the top 20 offices received a greater number of patent applications in 2023 than in 2022. Among the biggest increases were recorded in India, which grew 17.2%, Vietnam, which was up 8.6%, and Indonesia and France, which rose 5.9% and 5.6% respectively. India, on the other hand, experienced a seventh straight year of growth, with 2023’s 17.2% representing a second successive year of double-digit growth driven by a substantial increase in resident filings.
