Patent filings by Indians grew 32%, faster than others globally

Patent filings by applicants in India grew by 31.6 per cent in 2022, said World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in its annual World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report. With this, India has extended an 11-year run of unmatched by any other country among the top 10 filers. The report further said for the first time, there were more patents filed by Indian residents as against foreign filers, indicating at the country’s fast growing innovation ecosystem. Interestingly, resident patent filings in India, which are filed with the Indian Patent Office, increased by 47 per cent to 38,551 in 2022, and were half of the total filings of 77,068 filed with the Indian Patent Office. The WIPI report further said in 2022, global patenting activity surged to a new record high, getting fillip by Indian and Chinese innovators as well as powered by increased levels of innovation, entrepreneurship and digitalisation in these countries. As per the report, innovators from around the world submitted 3.5 million patent applications in 2022, marking a third consecutive year of growth. Overall, China, the US, Japan, Republic of Korea and Germany were the countries, with the highest numbers of patent filings in 2022. Bulk of IP filing activity occurs in Asia, from all origins, the report said. Asia accounted for 67.9 per cent, 67.8 per cent and 70.3 per cent of global patent, trademarks and industrial designs filing activity in 2022. The largest rise in filings was reported from India. Switzerland (6.1 per cent), China (3.1 per cent), Austria (2.5 per cent) and the UK (2.5 per cent) also reported robust growth in filings. With inputs from agencies