International patent applications in 2009 dropped for the first time on the back of a double-digit fall in US applications - but China, with a 30% surge, claimed a bigger piece of the shrunken pie. Yet observers say the quality of Chinese applications has not kept pace with their volume, and the country still has far to go before it can establish itself as a dominant player in intellectual property.
Applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), an international pact signed into law in 1970, fell by 4.5% in 2009. Declines were spread across most of the Western world: application numbers for the United States, Germany, Canada and Sweden all fell by more than 11%.
Francis Gurry, director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which publishes the PCT patents, told a press conference on 8 February that the dip was not surprising given the economic conditions. But Gurry called China's 29.7% increase "extraordinary"; it propelled the country ahead of France and into fifth place overall. Although the United States still holds the top spot with 45,790 applications, increases for China, second-ranked Japan and fourth-ranked South Korea indicate a shift towards Asia (see chart). "This confirms a trend we have seen over the last five years in particular, but it continues despite the economic crisis," says Gurry.
To read the full, original article click on this link: China's patents push : Nature News
Author: David
Cyranoski
