28 January 2020

Interactive Maps II: Where do Leading Patent Attorney Firms Find New Clients?

Australia Map PinIn my previous blog post, I explained how preparing articles looking at patent applicants, patent recipients, and attorney firm performance over calendar year 2019 had got me thinking about where ‘new’ Australian patent applicants come from, in the literal sense of where they are located geographically?  I also noted that IP Australia’s annual IP Government Open Data (IPGOD) release includes geographical information, in to the form of latitude and longitude coordinates, for Australian-resident applicants.  In particular, the most recent release, IPGOD 2019, includes location data for most Australian applicants going back over more than three decades, up until the end of 2018.

From this data, I have generated two interactive maps.  In the previous article I presented the first, showing the geographical distribution of new applicants that used the services of a patent attorney versus those that filed their own applications.

In this article, I present the second map, showing the distribution of new client acquisitions by ten leading Australian patent attorney firms.  The maps shows that, unsurprisingly, metropolitan applicants that engaged an attorney showed a distinct – though not universal – tendency to choose a firm with a local physical office.  Interestingly, comparing with the other map of self-filers versus those that engaged an attorney, an absence of local patent attorneys does not appear to be a major influence on whether applicants chose to self-service, rather than tracking down an attorney – the distributions of self-filers and those who engaged an attorney look very similar.  On the other hand, among leading firms it is clear that some do a better job than others of reaching out to acquire clients in regional areas.

Interactive Maps I: Where Do New Australian Patent Applicants Come From?

Australia Map PinIn my recent articles looking at patent applicants, patent recipients, and attorney firm performance over calendar year 2019, I noted (from all three perspectives) the disappointing showing of Australian applicants.  That being said, there are, nonetheless, thousands of applications filed by Australian residents every year, which got me wondering – out of idle curiosity as much as any expectation that it would be especially enlightening – where do ‘new’ Australian patent applicants come from?  I mean this in the most literal sense: where are Australian companies and individuals, filing for the first time, located geographically?

Fortunately, IP Australia’s annual IP Government Open Data (IPGOD) release includes geographical information, in to the form of latitude and longitude coordinates, for Australian-resident applicants.  In particular, the most recent release, IPGOD 2019, includes location data for most Australian applicants going back over more than three decades, up until the end of 2018.  I thought it might be fun to turn some of this data into interactive maps.

I have generated two such maps.  In this article I will present the first, which shows the geographical distribution of new applicants that used the services of a patent attorney versus those that filed their own applications.  Unsurprisingly, the data shows a concentration of applicants in the major cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  However, a significant number of applicants is also located in regional Australia.

In a separate article, I present the second map, showing the distribution of new client acquisitions by ten leading Australian patent attorney firms.

22 January 2020

Samsung Tops Australian Patent Grants for 2019, with Local Innovators Nowhere to be Seen

BinocularsIn my previous two articles I looked at entries to the Australian patent system in 2019, i.e. who filed new applications last year, and which patent attorney firms were the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the filing stakes.  These numbers tell us something about the current state of the market, and which companies are innovating – and seeking to protect their innovations – right now.  Many people, however, are more interested in who has been obtaining granted patent rights, rather than who might obtain granted rights in a few years’ time.  Indeed, the unveiling of the top recipients of US patents by IFI Claims Patent Services has become something of an annual event, generating considerable media interest, and the now-familiar sight of IBM sitting at the top of the list (for 27 consecutive years).

According to IFI Claims, there were 333,530 new US patents issued in 2019.  Patently-O’s Dennis Crouch, on the other hand, puts the number at 354,507, while a search on the USPTO’s own database (using the query string ‘ISD/20190101->20191231 and APT/1’) returns a count of 354,446.  Who to believe?!  Whichever number is correct, 2019 established a new all-time high, at about 10% above the previous record set in 2017.

I do not expect there to be quite as much interest in the fact that 17,007 Australian standard patents were granted in 2019.  This was not a new record.  In fact, it was slightly lower than 2018, when 17,065 standard patents were granted, and well below the 2016 peak of 23,774.  It should be kept in mind, however, that a surge in patent grants between 2014 and 2017 was driven largely by the behaviour of applicants bringing forward requests for examination prior to commencement of the Raising the Bar reforms on 15 April 2013, so the past couple of years should represent a more normal rate of patent issuance based on the underlying filings and examination requests.

Samsung topped the list of patent recipients in Australia with 203 patents, followed by Covidien (150), Apple (137), LG Electronics (132), and Huawei (119).  Not one Australian patentee appeared in the top 50, although New Zealand’s Fisher & Paykel Healthcare just squeezed in at number 48, albeit with just 35 patents.  By way of comparison, in 2019 Samsung obtained 6,469 US patents (ranked 2nd), Covidien 92 (68th), Apple 2,490 (7th), LG 2,805 (6th), and Huawei 2,418 (10th).

A notable absence from the top end of the rankings is Aristocrat which, despite filing a total of 722 standard patent applications between 2015 and 2018 received only 13 granted patents in 2019, in second place among Australian patentees behind national research organisation CSIRO with 25.  In fact, the top 30 Australian patentees combined received only 162 patents in 2019, or 31 fewer than Samsung.

Overall, despite being consistently the second largest filing group (after US residents) Australians were only the fifth most numerous recipients of Australian patents in 2019, with just 908 patents, behind Germans (937), Chinese (1,035), Japanese (1,257), and US residents (8,139).  So it seems that Australians are shunning our own patent system, which might not be such bad news if there were any sign that Australian applicants were securing patent protection in major export markets.  This does not, however, appear to be the case.  IFI Claims lists only the top nine countries in its public summary of US patent trends, from which Australia is absent, placing the country somewhere behind ninth-placed Canada, which received 4,651 US patents in 2019.

21 January 2020

Winners & Losers in Patent Filings – Why 2019 Was a Bad Year for Many Major Attorney Firms, and for Australia

You win, you loseIn my previous article, I looked at the top applicants for Australian patents in 2019.  In this article, I turn the spotlight on the Australian patent attorney firms that were responsible for handling many of those filings.  Having identified a 1% decline overall in standard patent filings, a nearly 20% decline in innovation patent filings, and essentially no change in provisional applications, it stands to reason that the Australian patent attorney profession as a whole has not experienced any growth in patent filing work over 2019.  However, as we shall see, the pain has not been shared equally across the profession.

Based on total patent filing numbers alone (which is, of course, not the whole story – although for many firms it is a significant part of it) the big winners in 2019 were, by and large, smaller independent firms, which appear to have beaten out a number of larger firms in acquiring new filing work.  Among the bigger and better-known brands, however, there is little evidence that ownership status – i.e. whether a firm is privately-held, or a member of either of one the listed IPH (ASX:IPH) or QANTM IP (ASX:QIP) groups – was a significant factor in securing filing work.  Size, rather than ownership, appears to correlate more closely with whether filing numbers grew or declined in 2019.

Comparing with my analysis for the 2018 calendar year, the top 10 firms for overall patent filings in 2019 remained unchanged, with Spruson & Ferguson, Davies Collison Cave (DCC), Griffith Hack, FB Rice, Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick (POF), Pizzeys, Shelston IP, FPA Patent Attorneys, Watermark (soon to be merged into Griffith Hack), and Madderns all taking their places in the same order as the previous year.  However, all but DCC experienced a decline in overall filings, and in standard application filings.

Aside from DCC’s gain in standard application filings, and a strong showing from Spruson & Ferguson on innovation patent filings, listed-group firms generally went backwards in 2019, with the winners across all application types (i.e. standard, provisional, and innovation) being privately-held firms.  However, this seems to have had less to do with ownership structure than size, and a general trend in favour of smaller firms over larger ones (which I have previously noted with respect to Australian SME clients, but which appears to be true more broadly).  With the notable exception of a significant growth in provisional application filings by FB Rice, the larger privately-held firms (which also include POF, Wrays and Madderns in Australia, and New Zealand based James & Wells) also failed to make gains in filing numbers in 2019.

While most people outside the profession probably care little for the business challenges faced by patent attorneys, I would argue that a bad year for attorney firms is also a bad year for Australia.  It is well-established that innovation underpins improvements in productivity and a rise in the standard of living (preferably with a reduced environmental impact), and demand for patent attorney services is (or should be) linked to levels of innovative activity.  Logically, then, stagnation in demand for such services is not good news for the nation.

17 January 2020

Chinese Mobile Tech Company OPPO Comes from Nowhere to Top Australian Patent Filing Table for 2019

2019Last calendar year, the number of standard patent filings in Australia fell by 1%, from 29,957 in 2018 to 29,666 in 2019.  While this represents only a small decline, it follows two years of growth, by 1.8% for 2016-2017 and 3.6% for 2017-2018, and thus represents a reversal of the recent upwards trend.  While international data on 2019 patent filings is not yet available, I think it doubtful that when IP Australia releases the 2020 edition of its annual Australian IP Report later this year it will be able to claim a high ranking for Australia among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in terms of patent growth, as it did in last year’s report.  The 2019 result reflects a decline in both direct filings, and filings resulting from national phase entry of international applications previously filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Demand for Australia’s second-tier patent right, the innovation patent, also fell in 2019, with 1702 applications for innovation patents being filed, compared with 2121 in 2018.  Legislation to phase out the innovation patent system passed in the Senate late last year, and now merely awaits the formality of passage through the House of Representatives before becoming law, although it seems unlikely that the decline in filings is in any way related.

Provisional filings – mostly by Australian residents – remained steady, with 4,947 provisional applications filed in 2019, compared with 4,943 in 2018.  This is mildly positive news, following as it does a fall of 5.2% between 2017 and 2018. 

It is also encouraging to see that self-filing of new patent applications declined yet again in 2019.  The number of originating applications (i.e. those that claim no earlier priority date, and are thus in most cases freshly-drafted) filed without the assistance of a patent attorney or other agent dropped to 1,702 from 1,870 in 2018.  This is now less than half of the nearly 3,500 originating applications that were self-filed each year between 2002 and 2007.  I regard this as a positive trend because the available data establishes, beyond any doubt, that outcomes for self-represented applicants are consistently far inferior to those of applicants that engage professional assistance.

As in previous years, the list of top applicants for Australian standard patents is dominated by foreign companies, with Aristocrat Technologies once again the only Australian company to appear in the top 30.  Aristocrat fell two places, to number four in the rankings, despite filing 238 standard patent applications (only just shy of the 252 it filed in 2018), and a significant decline in filings (from 314 to 244) by last year’s top applicant, Qualcomm, which now stands third.  LG Electronics was a big mover, increasing its filings from 175 to 245 to grab second spot.

The big surprise in the rankings is first-time entrant Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Ltd (‘OPPO’), which leapt straight to number one with 314 standard patent applications.  OPPO had never filed more than 19 Australian applications in any previous year (that was in 2017), and had filed a grand total of just 47 applications up until the end of 2018.

Among Australian residents, universities and public research institutions once again feature prominently, taking half of the top 20 places in the local rankings of standard patent applicants, and 12 of the top 20 in the provisional filing chart.

For all the numbers, and further commentary, please read on.

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