Each January, there is great interest in the leading recipients of US patents issued during the previous year and, in particular, whether IBM will once again retain the leading position it has held for over two decades. The answer to that question for 2021 is ‘yes’, although the size of IBM’s lead depends upon which data provider you choose to believe. IFI CLAIMS Patent Services – which has provided an annual summary for many years – has IBM receiving 8,682 US patents in 2021, comfortably ahead of Samsung Electronics on 6,366, followed by Canon with 3,021. In comparison, Harrity Patent Analytics – which began publishing its own independent reports in recent years – has IBM on 8,540, with Samsung nipping at its heels on 8,517, and both comfortably clear of LG in third spot with 4,368. (Harrity has Canon in fourth, with 3,400 US patents issued in 2021, while IFI CLAIMS has LG at eighth, on 2,487 US patents.)
So, who to believe? My guess is that they are both right-ish – subject to the challenges of correctly identifying and matching applicant and assignee information in the raw USPTO data – but that IFI CLAIMS and Harrity are probably accounting differently for patents granted to related companies, such as subsidiaries and corporate group members. It is notable that the two largest discrepancies among the top patent recipients are between Samsung and LG, both of which are South Korean chaebol – family conglomerates – which can be notoriously labyrinthine in their structures, and diverse in their product offerings.
I have conducted a corresponding analysis for Australian patent grants in 2021, and while Samsung and LG also both feature among the top recipients, the number one spot goes to China’s Huawei Technologies, which received 193 Australian patents last year. As far as counting is concerned, I keep things simple – named applicants are treated as the same entity if they have the same name, the same corporate identity, and the same country of residence, otherwise they are different. The Korean entity LG Electronics Inc placed second, receiving 186 Australian patents, while Samsung Electronics Ltd placed 10th, with 68 patents.
After Huawei and LG, the top five places were filled out by Qualcomm, Apple, and Adobe – all US entities – with 170, 157, and 103 patents, respectively.
The leading Australian resident patent recipients were the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), with 48 patents (coincidentally, the same as the number of new standard patent applications it filed in 2021) and Aristocrat Technologies, with 47 patents, placing them 23rd and 24th respectively.
In 2021, IP Australia granted 17,155 standard patents. While the total number of standard patent applications filed has generally increased over the years – from 25,563 in 2011 to 30,343 in 2021 – the number of patents granted has not followed the same trend. In fact, between 2018 and 2021 there were slightly fewer patents granted each year, on average, than between 2011 and 2013.
US resident entities are by far the largest users of the Australian patent system, receiving 7,629 standard patents in 2021. Second and third places were taken by China and Japan. Chinese applicants had the largest growth in patent grants, of nearly 24%, surpassing Japanese applicants, whose total grants fell by 5% in 2021. Australian residents – despite having consistently been the second largest filers of patent applications – are only the fourth most common recipients of granted patents, reflecting the fact that they are more likely than non-resident applicants to abandon applications before grant.
Read on for all the facts and figures.
Total Patent Grants and Performance of Australian Applicants
The chart below shows the number of Australian standard patents granted each year since 2011 (left axis), and the percentage of those patents that were granted to Australian residents. Between 2011 and 2013, the number of grants fell slightly, averaging 17,570 each year over this period. Since 2018, Australian patents have been granted in similar numbers, averaging a slightly lower 17,250 grants up to 2021. Overall, then, patents are not currently being granted at a greater rate than a decade ago, even though filing numbers have generally grown by nearly 5,000 applications per year over this time. There was, however, a surge in patent grants between 2014 and 2017, as IP Australia worked to clear a backlog of applications filed in the lead-up to commencement of the Raising the Bar law reforms in April 2013. The chart also shows that while Australian residents file nearly 10% of all standard patent applications, they accounted for only between about 5% and 7% of patents granted over this period.
It is important to understand that the number of patents granted each year is not purely a function of the number of applications filed in earlier years. It is strongly dependent on the examination resources available within IP Australia, which is able to regulate work allocated to examiners by controlling the rate at which applicants are directed to request examination. It also depends upon decisions made by applicants, such as whether, and when, to request examination voluntarily, and whether to request expedited examination. It is therefore not possible to deduce, from the grant numbers alone, whether there is any actual change in the rate of grant or abandonment of patent applications in Australia (although there is evidence that the proportion of applications that are accepted following examination has increased over the past decade).
What we can say is that IP Australia was examining applications and granting patents in 2021 at much the same rate as it was in 2013, and that it substantially increased its examination capacity between 2014 and 2017 in order to clear the backlog induced by the Raising the Bar reforms.
In 2021, Australian residents accounted for just 6.4% of granted patents, although this was a significant improvement on the previous four years during which – in 2019 – the proportion fell below 5%. Between 2011 and 2021, Australians filed, on average, 9% of all standard patent applications each year, so it is apparent that Australian applicants are more likely that non-residents to abandon their applications prior to grant. If actual granted patents are used as a metric, Australians make less use of their own national patent system than the annual filing figures indicate.
While this is disappointing, it should probably not come as a great surprise. A foreign applicant has, by definition, already made a decision prior to filing in Australia that the invention disclosed in their patent application is sufficiently valuable to warrant protection internationally. A domestic applicant, on the other hand, may have filed only in Australia, and may have done so speculatively, before being in a position to assess the value of the invention. Additionally, around 10-15% of resident filings are made by self-represented applicants, and a substantial majority of these have very poor prospects of proceeding to grant. I expect that a similar pattern of higher levels of abandonment by domestic applicants would be also observed in other jurisdictions.
Patentees’ Countries of Origin
The top 10 countries of origin of recipients of Australian patents is the same as for applicants in 2021, with only minor differences in the order. US applicants, as the largest users of the Australian patent system, comfortably topped the list, despite a decline of 7.5% over 2020. While Australian residents are consistently the second largest filers of new applications, their higher rates of abandonment allow Chinese and Japanese applicants to move ahead on numbers of patents granted, with Australia placing fourth. The only other difference in ranking compared with filings is South Korea and France, switching places at eighth and ninth.
| Country | Grants | YOY Growth |
|---|---|---|
| US | 7629 | -7.5% |
| China | 1336 | 23.8% |
| Japan | 1098 | -5.0% |
| Australia | 1094 | 15.2% |
| Germany | 878 | 0.0% |
| UK | 712 | 2.0% |
| Switzerland | 582 | -12.9% |
| South Korea | 524 | 1.7% |
| France | 432 | -9.6% |
| Canada | 321 | -4.5% |
Top Patent Recipients
The following table lists the top recipients of Australian standard patents in 2021.
| Rank | Applicant Name | Country | Grants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | HUAWEI TECH LTD | CN | 193 |
| 2 | LG ELECTRONICS INC | KR | 186 |
| 3 | QUALCOMM INC | US | 170 |
| 4 | APPLE INC | US | 157 |
| 5 | ADOBE INC | US | 103 |
| 6 | GUANGDONG OPPO MOBILE TELECOMS LTD | CN | 94 |
| 7 | HALLIBURTON ENERGY SERVICES INC | US | 83 |
| 8 | ADVANCED NEW TECH LTD | KY | 81 |
| 9 | NOVARTIS AG | CH | 70 |
| 10 | SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS LTD | KR | 68 |
| 11 | FISHER & PAYKEL HEALTHCARE LTD | NZ | 66 |
| 12 | BECTON DICKINSON & CO | US | 65 |
| =13 | CHINA UNIVERSITY OF MINING & TECH | CN | 62 |
| =13 | ILLUMINA INC | US | 62 |
| 15 | BOEING CO | US | 58 |
| 16 | GOOGLE INC | US | 56 |
| 17 | COVIDIEN LP | US | 55 |
| 18 | INTUIT INC | US | 52 |
| =19 | UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA | US | 51 |
| =19 | COLGATE-PALMOLIVE CO | US | 51 |
| 21 | MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS INC | US | 50 |
| 22 | TELEFONAKTIEBOLAGET LM ERICSSON PUBL | SE | 49 |
| 23 | COMMONWEALTH SCIENTIFIC & INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH ORGANISATION (CSIRO) | AU | 48 |
| 24 | ARISTOCRAT TECH AUSTRALIA PTY LTD | AU | 47 |
| =25 | REGENERON PHARMACEUTICALS INC | US | 46 |
| =25 | NTT DOCOMO INC | JP | 46 |
| =27 | 3M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES CO | US | 45 |
| =27 | F HOFFMANLA ROCHE AG | CH | 45 |
| =27 | SOCIETE DES PRODUITS NESTLE SA | CH | 45 |
| =27 | JANSSEN PHARMACEUTICA NV | BE | 45 |
IBM is nowhere to be seen – its focus is clearly primarily on patent acquisition in the US. However, a number of other leading US patent recipients also appear in the Australian top 30, including Huawei, LG, Apple, Samsung, Boeing, Google and Ericsson. The list of leading patentees in Australia is dominated by digital technology, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, and health care companies, while automotive companies – which make up a fifth of IFI CLAIMS top 25 US patent recipients – are notably absent from the Australian rankings.
The leading domestic patent recipient was Australia’s primary public research institution, the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in 23rd place with 48 patents. It was closely followed by electronic gaming machine manufacturer Aristocrat Technologies, with 47 patents. While they may have been granted almost identical numbers of patents, the difference in strategy between the two organisations could not be more stark. Between 2015 and 2019 Aristocrat filed an average of over 190 patent applications each year, whereas CSIRO averaged just 52.
Clearly, when CSIRO files it is because it intends, and expects, to receive a patent. The same cannot be said for Aristocrat which, as a commercial developer in a highly competitive market, obviously adopts a more aggressive and speculative approach to filing. It is also to be expected that Aristocrat’s applications are relatively narrow in scope, focussing on specific new products and features whose commercial value may not be known at the time of filing. CSIRO, on the other hand, is more likely to pursue patent protection on more general inventions for which it has been able to identify one or more potential commercial opportunities prior to filing.
Leading Australian-Resident Patent Recipients
The following table lists the top Australian-resident recipients of standard patents in 2021. Only CSIRO and Aristocrat also appear in the previous table of overall leaders, with a large gap to third-placed Breville, which received 12 patents relating to kitchen appliances including coffee makers, milk frothers, and sous vide devices. Universities (or their commercialisation arms, such as NewSouth Innovations and Uniquest) feature prominently among the top Australian patent recipients. While this is a positive sign for the quality and value of university research in Australia, it is disappointing that so few Australian commercial entities are acquiring greater numbers of patents.
| Rank | Applicant Name | Grants |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | COMMONWEALTH SCIENTIFIC & INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH ORGANISATION (CSIRO) | 48 |
| 2 | ARISTOCRAT TECH AUSTRALIA PTY LTD | 47 |
| 3 | BREVILLE PTY LTD | 12 |
| 4 | NEWSOUTH INNOVATIONS PTY LTD | 11 |
| 5 | MONASH UNIVERSITY | 9 |
| =6 | UNIQUEST PTY LTD | 8 |
| =6 | UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY | 8 |
| =8 | BHP BILLITON LTD | 7 |
| =8 | SALUDA MEDICAL PTY LTD | 7 |
| =10 | SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC AUSTRALIA PTY LTD | 6 |
| =10 | SUN PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES AUSTRALIA LTD | 6 |
| =10 | TECHNOLOGICAL RESOURCES PTY LTD | 6 |
| =13 | ASSA ABLOY AUSTRALIA PTY LTD | 5 |
| =13 | DEAKIN UNIVERSITY | 5 |
| =13 | GENERAL HOSPITAL CORP | 5 |
| =13 | UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE | 5 |
| =13 | WEIR MINERALS AUSTRALIA LTD | 5 |
| =18 | AINSWORTH GAME TECH LTD | 4 |
| =18 | BARAJA PTY LTD | 4 |
| =18 | BULENT BESIM (IPRINT TECHNOLOGIES) | 4 |
| =18 | CATERPILLAR OF AUSTRALIA PTY LTD | 4 |
| =18 | DIGILOG TECH PTY LTD | 4 |
| =18 | DYWIDAG SYSTEMS INTL PTY LTD | 4 |
| =18 | INFRABUILD WIRE PTY LTD | 4 |
| =18 | MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS INTL LTD | 4 |
| =18 | MINELAB ELECTRONICS PTY LTD | 4 |
| =18 | PATRIOT CAMPERS HOLDINGS PTY LTD | 4 |
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