China has surpassed the US to become the top source of patent applications filed globally, the position previously held by the US each year since the PCT began operations in 1978, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

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In 1999, WIPO received 276 applications from China. By 2019, that number rose to 58,990, which is an increase of 200X. The top 5 countries to file patent applications included China, the US, Japan, Germany and Korea.

What is interesting to note is that India filed 2,053 applications, which is a meagre 2.6 percent increase compared to 2018, and is half of the 4,411 applications filed by Huwaei, the top corporate filer in 2019.

India’s filings are lower than the other corporate filers in the list including Mitsubishi Electirc Corp of Japan (2661), Samsung electronics (2334) and Qualcomm (2127). India’s contribution to world filings is just 0.77 percent and it did not feature in the top 50 corporates that contributed to patent filing.

Top 5 patent applications

China: 58,990 (22% of total)

US: 57,840 (21.7%)

Japan: 52660 (19.8%)

Germany: 19353 (7.2%)

Republic of Korea 19085 (7.2%)

India: 2053 (14th Rank, 0.77%)

India didn’t feature even in the list of top 10 educational institutions to file for patents. IIT made 58 patent filings, which is a 21 percent increase from last year.

This, however, is much lower than University of California topping the list with 470 applications, followed by Tsinghua University (265) , Shenzhen University (247), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (230) and South China University of Technology (164).

The top 10 applicants from India included IIT (58), Council of Scientific and Industrial research (45), Dr. Reddy's laboratories ltd (22), Indian Institute of Science (22), UPL limited (22). Cipla limited(18), Hero Motocorp limited (15), Meril life sciences pvt ltd.(14), Reliance industries limited (14) and PI industries ltd (13).

And it’s not limited to patents, India needs to step up in applying for trademarks as well, which was just 0.7 percent of total world filings at 460 applications. The USA topped this list with 10,087 applications followed by Germany (7,700), China (6,339), France (4,437) and Switzerland (3,729).

The Indian top applicants for trademark included:

NIRSAN CONNECT PRIVATE LIMITED (124),

Welspun (19).

UPL (16).

Birla Century (10),

Saregama (7),

Welspun Flooring (7),

AUREA BIOLABS PRIVATE LIMITED (5),

BIOTECH VISIONCARE PRIVATE LIMITED (5)

BRAINBEES SOLUTIONS PRIVATE LIMITED (5)

DATAR CANCER GENETICS LIMITED (5)

In industrial designs, having filed for only three designs, against 21,807 globally, the country has almost no presence. Germany, Korea, Switzerland, Italy and Netherlands were the top applicants in this list.

First Published:Aug 24, 2020 4:15 PM IST