Current situations of international patents:
The Japanese motivation of application of patents is pretty high and it is rated at the top level both in number
of applications and rate of increase from international point of view. Also, the applications of China and Korea
have been rapidly increasing in recent years, making these three countries in the eastern Asia including Japan
standing out in terms of rate of increase.
By industry, electrical industry is dominating, especially Toyota putting up a good fight. Also, by nation,
applications to China are surging、not to mention U.S..
There are more than one thousand patent distributors in the United States with Europe more than one hundred of
them, but there is few in Japan. There has not been any business of patents to sell or buy until recent years in
Japan. In major companies, patents are for cross license purpose preparing against patent suits, and in universities
and public research organizations, they are for means to announce their research results. All in all, to secure
the patents is their ultimate goals.
important to have international patents serve to business and to expand to positive spiral of
" IP growth " that the revenue will contribute to the capital of the next research and development.
" Statistical reference material " By nation, number of international patents applied in 2005
Japan’s number of international patents applied in 2005: 25,145 cases (Second in the world)
World : 134,073 cases
U.S.A.: 45,111 cases (First)
Germany: 15,870 cases (Third)
Ratio of Japan’s international patents applied over previous year 124.3%(Third in the world)(2004: 20,223 cases)
World: 109.4%
China: 143.7% (First)
Korea: 133.6% (Second)
" Statistical reference material " Number of international patents applied by Japanese companies and groups in 2005
Matsushita: 2,021 cases (Second)
Sony: 449 cases (Sixteenth)
Mitsubishi: 436 cases (Seventeenth)
Toyota: 399 cases (nineteenth)
Fujitsu: 358 cases (Twenty third)
NEC: 353 cases (Twenty fifth)
JST: 304 cases (Thirty third)
(Reference: Philips: 2,492 cases (First), Samsung: 483 cases (Fourteenth), LG: 332 cases (Twenty ninth))
- Above is extracted from the WIPO data. Numbers are through the patent cooperation treaty PCT. -
