The Australian and New Zealand patent filing landscape in 2025 was marked by the continuation of established market trends alongside a striking new development that has potentially significant implications for both the patent system and the patent attorney profession. Total standard patent applications filed in Australia decreased marginally by 0.4% to 30,327, representing the third consecutive year of modest decline following a pandemic-era peak. New Zealand complete applications fell more substantially, by 4.4% to 5,538. However, these figures were eclipsed by a dramatic surge in provisional patent filings driven by what appears to be widespread use of generative AI tools by self-represented applicants, a phenomenon that resulted in a near-tripling of self-filed provisional applications.
Market share dynamics continued to evolve in ways that present ongoing challenges for firms within the IPH Limited group. Independent firms collectively surpassed the 50% filing share threshold for the first time, accounting for 51.7% of Australian patent filings, while IPH's share declined further to 32.7%, down from 35.0% in 2024. Meanwhile, QANTM IP firms maintained relatively stable positioning at 15.6% filing share under private equity ownership. This continuing divergence reinforces the conclusion that ownership structure alone cannot explain firm performance, with factors including geographic market exposure, client demographics, and strategic positioning all playing significant roles.
Analysis of the 2025 data reveals a market navigating multiple concurrent trends: declining US-originating applications (down 5.1%), growing Chinese filings (up 13.5%), and the emergence of AI as both a potential disruptor and, paradoxically, a possible source of future work for patent attorneys.
Let’s dive in and look at the data.
The High Court of Australia has denied an application by the Commissioner of Patents for special leave to appeal a decision of the Full Federal Court in which claims to a computer-implemented invention (CII), in the form of an electronic gaming machine (EGM), were found to be patent-eligible in Australia. This brings to an end the long-running dispute over patentability of Aristocrat’s claims, and marks the first time since 1991 (IBM v Commissioner of Patents 
‘AI slop’, defined as ‘low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user’, was named 
The Australian patent attorney profession has been undergoing a significant structural shift over the past decade. The listing of IPH Ltd in November 2014, and its subsequent series of acquisitions and mergers has created a dominant force controlling multiple major firms, while QANTM IP (QIP) -- which was originally publicly listed , but now owned by private equity – has become established as a second consolidated group. These ownership changes were expected to generate economies of scale and competitive advantages, yet the data tells a more complex story. Independent firms – those remaining outside the IPH and QIP consolidated groups – 
Unsurprisingly, many of my conversations with fellow patent attorneys over the past couple of years have centred on AI – my work with it, and what it means for patent practice. My own experience, and that of people I have spoken to, is that full patent drafting is not (yet) a practical application of AI, so patent attorneys are not yet out of a job! But I believe that there are, increasingly, parts of this task with which AI can provide effective assistance and productivity enhancements. And while much discussion around AI and intellectual property is directed to high-level policy questions or speculative future scenarios, I'm also interested in what we can do right now.
A former IP Australia patent examiner who alleges ‘unlawful, unreasonable, unfair, inefficient, and abusive management practices’ at the government agency is seeking Federal Court review of 
At the time of writing, there are 26,111 patent applications pending and not yet accepted (i.e. awaiting examination, or under examination) at the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ). Of these, 26,029 are subject to the provisions of the current law, the 
Today, something a little different for this blog. As many readers are aware, for the past couple of years I have been working towards a PhD in which, very broadly speaking, I have been looking at applying machine learning, AI and language models to the analysis of patent claims (in particular, to assessing the scope of claims). Most recently, I have been exploring how it might be possible to apply large language models – the types of AI behind popular chat services such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude (my personal chatbot of choice), Meta’s LLaMa and (yes) Chinese newcomer DeepSeek – to this task. To experiment with ‘open source’ (
My latest analysis of patent filing data for 2024 confirms a shift that has been years in the making – Chinese applicants have finally overtaken Australian residents to become the second largest source of patent applications, behind only the United States. This milestone comes as US filings showed a notable decline of 5.7%, while Chinese applications continued their steady growth with a 7.2% increase over the previous year.
Those of you who have been following my journey over the past couple of years will be aware that I am currently conducting PhD research at Melbourne Law School, investigating patent claim scope and its relationship to patent system performance. I have now reached a critical stage in the project where I need help from people with hands-on experience reading, analysing, and working with patent claims.
In a concerning development, the authority that regulates the Australian and New Zealand IP professions, the 
The recent Full Federal Court decision in Zoetis Services LLC v Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health USA Inc 
A recent Full Court decision suggests that demonstrating prior art could be ‘reasonably expected to be ascertained’ under the pre-Raising the Bar (RtB) law may be considerably easier than previously thought. But has the pendulum swung too far? In relaxing the evidentiary requirements for establishing that prior art information would have been found by the skilled person, the Full Court may have undermined a safeguard against hindsight analysis that was inherent in the prior law.
While this blog normally focuses on patent matters, occasionally a case comes along that warrants stepping outside my usual lane. The Full Court of the Federal Court’s decision in Killer Queen LLC v Taylor 
A single judge of the Federal Court of Australia, Justice O’Bryan, has granted Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd (‘Aristocrat’) leave to appeal a decision issued back in March this year. In that decision, Justice Burley found that all remaining claims in a group of innovation patents relating to computer-implemented electronic gaming machine (EGM) technology did not define patent-eligible subject matter. The grant of leave opens up an opportunity for Aristocrat to ask the High Court of Australia to untangle the mess that it created back in 2022 when a six-judge panel split 3:3 on whether or not to allow an earlier appeal against a decision of the Full Federal Court relating to the primary claims of the same innovation patents.
Australia has a pre-grant patent opposition system. That is to say, once an application has passed examination and been accepted for potential grant as a patent, there is a period (of three months) during which anybody may oppose the grant. The subsequent opposition proceedings – if they run their full course – consist of a series of evidentiary stages, legal submissions, and an oral hearing, following which the hearing officer (a delegate of the Commissioner of Patents) issues a written decision on the outcome of the opposition. In the final reckoning, the patent application may emerge unscathed, it may be refused, or it may end up being granted subject to narrowing amendments. 
As I recently reported, 
Over the past five years (i.e. since 2019) Korea’s LG Electronics Inc and China’s Huawei Technologies Ltd have consistently placed in the top five applicants for Australian patents. Indeed, for the past four years they were in the leading three. In 2021, 
In 2023 the total number of standard patent applications filed in Australia remained above 30,000 for the third year running, despite a 2.4% drop in filings. This follows a decline of nearly 0.5% in the previous year. However, whereas the decline in new applications in 2022 was due to fewer filings by Australian residents (with a slight increase in foreign-originating applications preventing a larger fall), the drop in 2023 was the result of nearly 800 fewer filings by foreign applicants. As always, a majority of new filings were national phase entries (NPEs) derived from international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). But, for the first time since 2016, the number of PCT NPEs fell – by 3.2% – offset somewhat by a 14% rise in new direct national filings. The number of divisional applications also fell in 2023, by 7.3%.
