Patent Filing Trends in 2025 Show Impact of AI and Continued Decline in Listed Firm Share

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.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, New Zealand, Patent analytics, Patent attorney profession

Patent Applicants 2024– China Outfiles Australian Residents While LG Maintains Individual Lead

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.

Among individual applicants, LG Electronics maintained its position at the top of the table with 229 filings, extending its lead over second-placed Huawei.  The healthcare and medical sector showed particular strength, with companies like Regeneron Pharmaceuticals making substantial gains in the rankings.  Meanwhile, the technology sector saw some significant changes, including the departure of IBM from the top 30 applicants after a brief period of increased activity.

Analysis of the data by industry sector reveals some clear trends, with healthcare and medical applications showing strong growth while technology sector filings declined overall.  However, these broad patterns mask considerable variation at the individual company level, suggesting that strategic considerations, rather than general market conditions, may be driving filing decisions for many of the leading applicants.

So let’s take a look at the numbers in more detail.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, China, Patent analytics

Patent Filing Trends 2024– Market Share Shifts Continue as Firms Face Ongoing Challenges

The landscape of patent filing activity across Australia and New Zealand underwent continued transformation in 2024, marked by declining total filings and ongoing shifts in market share distribution and firm performance.  Total standard patent applications filed in Australia decreased by 3.4% to 30,442, while New Zealand experienced a more pronounced decline of 7.3% to 6,202 applications.  These trends are set against a backdrop of substantial structural change in the industry, most notably the acquisition of QANTM IP Limited by private equity management company Adamantem Capital in August, leaving IPH Limited as the last publicly listed ownership group standing.

As was the case last year, analysis of filing patterns reveals trends that create challenges for patent attorney firms regardless of their ownership structures.  While direct filings in Australia increased by 7.5% to 9,238, this was more than offset by PCT national phase entries declining by 7.5% to 21,202, suggesting shifting preferences in filing strategies.  Provisional applications showed modest growth of 2.2% to 4,335, marking a second consecutive year of recovery from post-pandemic lows, though still significantly below pre-2019 levels.

A market share analysis presents particularly interesting insights into evolving industry dynamics.  Independent firms collectively increased their share of Australian patent filings to 49.6%, continuing a trajectory of share growth that has seen smaller practices double their collective presence since 2014.  This shift occurred as IPH group firms experienced further decline in collective share to 35.0%, while QANTM IP, under its new private equity ownership, maintained relatively stable positioning at 15.4%.  These changes reflect broader industry trends toward smaller, specialised practices, though the notable declines experienced by larger firms across both independent and group categories suggest that size, as much as ownership structure, continues to be anb influence on client choice.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, New Zealand, Patent analytics, Patent attorney profession

Large vs Small, Group Ownership vs Independent – What Factors Influenced Firms’ Patent Filing Share in 2023?

As I recently reported, Australian patent filings in 2023 fell slightly, by 2.4%, over the previous year.  This implies, of course, that patent attorneys filing applications on behalf of domestic and foreign clients should, overall, also have experienced a similar decline new filings.  But, of course, individual firms fared differently in the competition for this work.  Looking at new complete (i.e. non-provisional) patent filings across Australia and New Zealand, declines were experienced by all firms held within the two groups owned by Australian Securities Exchange listed entities IPH Limited (ASX:IPH) and QANTM IP Limited (ASX:QIP).  IPH firms Spruson & Ferguson, Griffith Hack, AJ Park, and Pizzeys filings declined by 5.0%, 3.6%, 14.9% and 6.9% respectively,  QANTM IP firms Davies Collison Cave and FPA Patent Attorneys filings declined by 13.2% and 8.8% respectively. 

But it was not only the listed group firms that saw declines in excess of the 2.4% average.  Of the leading ten firms, only Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick (+3.1%) and Madderns (+10.3%) achieved growth in filing numbers.  While ownership structure is one possible factor influencing client choice, firm size (irrespective of ownership) appears also to be (negatively) correlated with filing growth.  Additionally, the number of new patent filings fell significantly in New Zealand, which disproportionately impacted those trans-Tasman firms – most notably A J Park – with a higher exposure to the market for New Zealand patent services.

Overall, the share of Australian patent filings has continued to shift generally away from larger and/or listed group firms in favour of smaller independent firms.  But even this trend is not simple to unpack.  For many years now, IPH firms have shed filing share, while the QANTM IP firms have held fairly steady, although they experienced a notable decline in share in 2023.  On the other hand, the top six independent firms that have been in continuous operation since IPH initially listed in 2014 have collectively gained 6.3% filing share over this period.  However, bigger gains have been made by the numerous small (i.e. employing fewer than 10 patent attorneys), independent, practices that account for just over half of the trans-Tasman patent attorneys working in private practice.  There are over 150 such practices, including the two rapidly-growing recent entrants RnB IP and GLMR, which have collectively gained 11.8% filing share since 2014, and now account for nearly 23% of all Australian complete patent filings.

Let’s look at the numbers in more detail.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, New Zealand, Patent analytics, Patent attorney profession

LG Again Tops Australian Patent Filings in 2023, as Most of the ‘Usual Suspects’ Return

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, Huawei came out on top with LG a close second.  In 2022, LG took top place, with IBM appearing from nowhere to push Huawei back into third.  And in 2023, LG has once again grabbed the top spot, with Huawei not too far behind, and IBM easing up on its Australian filing frenzy to slip back into equal 14^th position with a ‘mere’ 100 applications.

Notwithstanding Asian companies holding the top two positions, US applicants dominated to top 30 filers, taking up 20 spots including six of the top 10.  This is no great surprise.  As the numbers in my previous article show, US residents filed 44% of all Australian patent applications in 2023, despite a 6% decline in US-originating filings.  While some applicants moved up or down the rankings, the overall make-up of the top 30 was similar to the previous year, with only eight exits/entries among the lower positions.  Furthermore, a number of the applicants entering the table are not unfamiliar names, having appeared previously before dropping out temporarily.

Once again, the leading Australian-based applicant was Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd with 73 applications, followed by the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with 54 applications – both slightly up on the previous year’s numbers.  Yet again the top New Zealand applicant was Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Ltd which, with 107 applications, comfortably out-filed the leading Australians.

Read on for a look at the numbers in more detail.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics

Patent Filings in Australia Fell Again in 2023, but Applications from China are Bucking the Trend

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%.

In some (very limited) good news for Australia, patent filings by domestic residents increased by 2.6%, while the number of provisional applications increased by 5%.  Unfortunately, however, two thirds of the additional provisional applications in 2023 were filed without the professional assistance of a patent attorney.  (I say ‘unfortunately’ because, as I have shown previously, the outcomes for self-represented applicants are generally abysmal, so for the most part they are wasting their time and what little money they are expending on fees to IP Australia.)

The top 10 countries of origin of applications filed in 2023 were the United States, Australia, China, Japan, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, France and Canada.  There were substantial drops in the numbers of applications filed by applicants from the US (-6.0%), South Korea (-10.5%) and Canada (-14%).  The largest growths in filings were from China (12.1%) and Japan (5.2%).  China is once again snapping at the heels of Australia from second position on the league table.  This happened previously in 2020, when I (mistakenly) predicted that Chinese filings might surpass domestic filings as early as 2021.  But while it is taking longer than appeared likely a few years ago, it seems inevitable that Australians will soon fall behind Chinese applicants as users of the Australian patent system.

Given that the innovation patent system is being phased out, it should come as no surprise that just 106 innovation patent applications were filed in 2023 (down from 191 in 2022), all of which were necessarily derived from existing applications filed prior to 26 August 2021.  Around two-thirds of applicants still filing for innovation patents are Australian (120 in 2022 and 67 in 2023).  Furthermore, a larger proportion of innovation patents are now being certified and made enforceable than has historically been the case, with 75 of those filed in 2022, and 31 of those filed in 2023, so far having been certified.  But with innovation patents now being a small, and shrinking, part of the Australian patent system, I shall have nothing more to say about them in this article, and I will drop the distinguishing term ‘standard’ when talking about ‘regular’ patent applications.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics

IPH Sues Again, as Competition Hots Up for Australian and New Zealand Patent Filings in 2022

As I recently reported, Australian (standard) patent filings in 2022 remained close to the historic highs of the previous year.  This implies, of course, that patent attorneys filing applications on behalf of domestic and foreign clients should, overall, also have maintained high numbers of new filings.  But, of course, individual firms fared differently in the competition for this work.  Looking at total new standard patent filings across Australia and New Zealand, gains were made by the two firms owned by QANTM IP Limited (ASX:QIP), namely Davies Collison Cave (up by 5.7% to 4094 applications) and FPA Patent Attorneys (up by 3.9% to 2444 applications, after incorporating filings originally made by Cotters).  Other firms to make notable gains, in terms of both filing numbers and percentage growth, were FB Rice (up by 7.6% to 3697 applications), Wrays (up by 16.2% to 1380 applications) and RnB IP (up by 10.5% to 864 applications).  Firms that also made good percentage gains, albeit off a lower base of filings, included Allens (6.0%), Michael Buck IP (6.6%), Adams Pluck (22.6%), Dentons (30.7%) and Collison & Co (18.7%).

On the other side of the ledger, Madderns’ filings fell by 13.5%, to 801 applications.  Within the group of firms owned by IPH Limited (ASX:IPH), Spruson & Ferguson, AJ Park and Pizzeys all saw declines in new filings (by 7.9%, 2.8% and 2.9% respectively), while Griffith Hack held steady with a small (0.6%) increase in filings.  IPH has just reported its half-year financial results (for July-December 2022) [PDF 255kB], and while the news was positive for the group overall – a 24% uplift in underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to A$80.4 million – like-for-like EBITDA for the Australian and New Zealand IP businesses declined by 6%.  IPH has blamed this partly on travel expenses, with activity increasing following the end of COVID-related travel restrictions.  But it is apparent that a decline in Australian and New Zealand patent filings has also contributed. 

In related news from the IPH group, while Pizzeys settled its legal dispute with RnB IP late last year, Spruson & Ferguson recently commenced similar proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia (case no. NSD6/2023) against upstart firm GLMR and its four principals.  And, just as the founders of RnB IP were former employees of Pizzeys, the principals of GLMR are all former employees of Spruson and Ferguson.  Through its Federal Court action, Sprusons is seeking an order for preliminary discovery – presumably fishing for evidence of GLMR’s contact with Sprusons’ clients – which is precisely how Pizzeys commenced its action against RnB IP in June 2019.  To date, GLMR has filed just 194 applications (with the earliest being in February 2022).  However, it has also taken over responsibility for at least 629 applications that were previously filed and/or managed by Spruson & Ferguson.  It is early days yet, but we can perhaps expect to see this dispute take much the same course as Pizzeys v RnB IP.

Let’s have a look at the numbers in more detail.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, New Zealand, Patent analytics, Patent attorney profession

Korea’s LG Tops Australian Patent Filing Table, While IBM Surprises in Second Place

In recent years, the title of leading filer of Australian patent applications has been hotly (though probably inadvertently) contested between Huawei Technologies Ltd (China), Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Ltd (China), and LG Electronics (South Korea).  In 2022, LG was a clear winner, with 283 new standard patent applications.  Huawei filed 181 applications, while OPPO disappeared entirely from the leader board, with just 16 applications filed in 2022 – a long way short of the 435 applications it filed at its peak in 2020. 

The big surprise of the past year, however, is the appearance of IBM in second place, with 189 applications.  The company affectionately known as ‘Big Blue’ was the leading US patent recipient for a remarkable 29 consecutive years.  At its peak, it filed more than 10,000 applications in a single year, and received 8,682 US patents in 2021.  However, throughout all of this time IBM has not been a major patent applicant in Australia, filing no more than 35 applications (in 1995) during any year between 1991 and 2020.

Other major filers of recent years to have dropped out of the top 30 include cloud computing and virtualization technology provider Citrix Systems, Inc (sixth placed in 2021 with 147 applications, down to just 19 filings in 2022) and semiconductor and wireless technology company Qualcomm Inc (which peaked at 326 applications in 2018, but filed just 28 times in 2022).

Once again, the leading Australian-based applicant was Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd with 69 applications, followed by the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with 51 applications.  As in 2021, the top New Zealand applicant was Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Ltd which, with 111 applications, easily out-filed the leading Australians.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics

Australian Patent Filings Declined Slightly in 2022, but Held at Historic Highs by Strong International Interest

In 2022, for the second year running, the number of standard patent applications filed in Australia exceeded 30,000.  While there was a slight decline of 0.5% compared with 2021, filings remained at a historic high.  This was, however, primarily due to continuing growth of nearly 1% in applications originating overseas.  Applications from Australian residents fell by 16.6%, returning to around the same level as between 2016 and 2020 following a bumper year in 2021 that was driven substantially by applicants wishing to secure a filing date prior to the phase-out of the innovation patent system.  Also disappointing was a continuing decline in the number of provisional applications filed.  Provisional filings have not been as low as they are now since the mid-1980s.

The United States remained the largest source of new Australian patent applications, by a large margin, accounting for 46% of all filings.  Australian residents held on to second position, despite the significant drop in filings, as the number of applications from China fell for the first time in more than two decades.  The top 10 remained the same overall, with the UK and South Korea each gaining a position, at the expense of Germany and France.  The UK is now in fifth place, and only marginally behind fourth-placed Japan, following two consecutive years of strong growth in filings.

Australia’s poor patenting performance continues to be a concern.  It is not just about resident applications, and there are a number of other metrics – including filings in other jurisdictions and various other innovation indicators – that consistently point to Australian underperformance in the identification, protection, management and commercialisation of technological innovations.  This is an area in which Australia needs to do better.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics

Division and Conversion – the Continuing Life of the Australian Innovation Patent

In the Patents chapter of its recently-published 2022 IP Report, IP Australia provides the usual annual filing statistics for 2021.  According to the report, there were 23,371 Australian standard patent applications filed as National Phase Entries (NPEs) from international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), 9,026 standard applications filed directly in Australia, making up a record total of 32,397 new standard applications.  There were also 4,297 provisional applications filed, and 7,844 innovation patent applications ‘including … standard patents converted to innovation patents’.  On IP Australia’s figures, the top five applicants in 2021 were LG Electronics (259 applications), Huawei (255), OPPO (197), Nestle (157) and Apple (151).

All patent data is a moving target.  The patent office database is a living entity which is updated daily with new applications, and changes to existing applications, including status updates, completion of missing information, and even occasional backdating of records for reasons such as correcting errors or actioning successful applications for extensions of time to complete various actions.  It is not surprising, then, that there are some minor discrepancies between figures in the IP Report and numbers that I published back in January, when the dust was still settling on 2021.  The most notable difference is probably that I awarded the top filing spot to Huawei because, at that time, LG had only 251 filings officially recorded – an additional eight LG applications filed in December 2021 were yet to be fully processed.

A more substantial discrepancy is that I counted only 7,657 innovation patent filings in 2021.  A difference of 187 applications is hard to explain as a consequence ‘late year’ filings, given that most new innovation patent applications were filed prior to 26 August 2021, when the phase-out of the innovation patent system commenced.  The key to this difference is in the words I quoted from the Report above in italics – IP Australia’s numbers include applications that were converted from existing applications of other types, as well as newly-filed applications.

Whether conversions should be included with new filings or not really depends upon what you are trying to count.  On the one hand, converting an existing application to an innovation patent application does not add to the total number of applications in progress, because the original application is effectively replaced by the conversion.  On the other hand, the converted application is assigned a new number and a record of the original application remains in IP Australia’s database, and can be found via the AusPat online search system.  And, from IP Australia’s perspective, the ‘new’ innovation patent application has to be processed through the formalities examination, and granted as a patent, in exactly the same way as a ‘fresh’ filing.

A better approach may be to look more deeply at the circumstances in which conversions are occurring, and to try to account for the applicant behaviour in detail.  It is then possible to make an informed decision on how to account for all applications, depending upon your purposes.  Conversion of other application types to innovation patents remains relevant because, despite the phase-out of the system, it remains possible to convert any pending application filed prior to 26 August 2021.  It also continues to be possible to file new innovation patent applications as divisionals of any standard patent application with a filing date prior to 26 August 2021.

In this article I will therefore look at both division and conversion to innovation patents, and the circumstances in which these strategies have been used, as an insight into the continuing life of the Australian innovation patent during the phase-out period.  I will also endeavour to provide a ‘definitive’ count of new applications filed in 2021.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Innovation patent, Patent analytics

Who Were The Leading Australian Patent Prosecution Firms in 2021?

With significant increases in both standard and (especially) innovation patent applications, 2021 should have been a bumper year for patent attorneys operating in Australia.  And although that was true overall, the benefits were not uniformly distributed.  While some smaller firms experienced gains in filing numbers well above the overall growth rate, a number of larger firms within the publicly-listed ownership groups struggled to keep pace.  Spruson & Ferguson remained the biggest filer of new applications – particularly following integration of the Shelston IP business – but achieved virtually no overall growth in new filings.  The number of applications filed by third-placed Griffith Hack actually fell in 2021, with the firm narrowly avoiding falling behind fourth-placed FB Rice.

Having a focus on incoming work from foreign applicants, Spruson & Ferguson filed only marginally more new standard patent applications on behalf of Australian residents than its closest competitors, Davies Collison Cave and Griffith Hack.  About half of all filings handled by Spruson & Ferguson originated in the US, slightly above the overall proportion of 45% Australian standard applications by US applicants.  A handful of firms – particularly RnB IP, Pizzeys, and FPA Patent Attorneys – rely far more heavily on US-originating work, while Madderns is notable for handling a higher proportion of filings from China than from the US.

Looking beyond filings to ongoing patent prosecution work, Spruson & Ferguson was the leader in 2021, by a large margin.  Generally speaking, firms with larger numbers of filings over the previous few years had more prosecution work in 2021, which was an advantage for Spruson & Ferguson and Griffith Hack despite their failure to keep pace with their competitors in terms of growth in new filings.  The flip side of this, of course, is that relatively lower filing numbers in 2021 will result in less prosecution work over the coming years.

Read on for all the details.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics, Patent attorney profession

Mea Culpa! Corrections to 2021 Australian Patent Filing Statistics Show a Bigger Bumper Year than Originally Reported

This week I discovered an obscure and insidious bug in the code that maintains my Australian patent database.  It has existed for months, but did not manifest itself until January, when I prepared the data for my reports on 2021 patent filings.  The impact was that around 2,000 standard patent applications, or just over 6% of the total, went missing.  These were almost exclusively PCT national phase entry applications, mostly filed by foreign applicants.  I have now fixed the bug, and updated my data.  The two affected articles, Australian Patent Filings Up in 2021, Aided by Innovation Patent’s Demise and Huawei Takes Top Spot in Australian Patent Filings, While Aristocrat Slides Down Rankings (which was originally titled ‘LG Takes Top Spot…’), have been corrected.  The general analysis and observations are substantially unaffected by the corrections, although obviously some of the specific numerical results were wrong.  For those who have already read the original articles, here is an overview of the more significant corrections.

Most notably, the total number of standard patent applications filed in 2021 is higher than I originally reported, at 32,393 rather than 30,343.  This makes last year a new record for Australian filings by an even larger margin than reported!

The ‘missing’ applications were essentially a random sample of the overall PCT national filings, so the corrections do not change the ranking of countries of origin – the top five are still the US, Australia, China, Japan and Germany.  The numbers of filings from the US and Australia grew by more than originally reported, while Chinese originating filings remained steady compared to 2020 (not declining, as reported), Japanese filings fell by less than reported, and German filings grew slightly, rather than declining slightly as reported.

The leading applicants remain largely unchanged, although there have been some changes in ranking due to small corrections in total filing numbers.  LG and Huawei are almost neck-and-neck at the top of the filing table, so it is not hugely surprising that they have swapped places, with Huawei (255 applications) just ahead of LG (251 applications).  My apologies to any LG fans who may have been celebrating the win!

Aristocrat picked up no additional applications in the correction (none of its 2021 filings were based on PCT applications), and its slide down the rankings was therefore slightly greater than originally reported, down to 25^th rather than equal 21^st place.  It is still the leading Australian resident applicant, by a comfortable margin.

Provisional filing numbers were unaffected by the software bug, while innovation patent filings were negligibly impacted – just 10 applications went missing from a total of 7,653 filed in 2021.

My apologies to anyone who may have relied upon the original data for any reason.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics

Huawei the Top Recipient of Australian Patents in 2021, as Total Annual Grants Remain Steady

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 10^th, 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 23^rd and 24^th 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.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics

Huawei Takes Top Spot in Australian Patent Filings, While Aristocrat Slides Down Rankings

This article was updated on 11 February 2022 to correct errors in some of the filing numbers.  I have also published a brief explanation and summary of the most significant changes.

After two years on top of Australian patent filing charts – including a remarkable (by Australian standards) 435 applications in 2020 – Chinese telecommunications manufacturer OPPO dropped back to third position in 2021.  Last year’s runner-up, South Korea’s LG Electronics, once again took second place, filing 251 new Australian standard patent applications up from 236 in 2020.  China’s Huawei Technologies moved into the top spot, with 255 new applications, up from 229 in 2020.  Huawei now owns around 1,300 live Australian patents and applications, which is a significant investment for a company that is effectively barred from the Australian market.  It is likely, however, that many of these patents and applications cover standardised mobile and data communications technologies that are implemented across the industry, and which therefore provide Huawei with a substantial stream of licensing income.

The top Australian resident applicant, once again, was electronic gaming system developer Aristocrat Technologies.  However, from a peak of 252 applications filed in 2018, Aristocrat’s filings have declined significantly.  It filed only 72 new standard patent applications in 2021, falling to equal 25^th place in the annual ranking.  Over the same period, Aristocrat has been engaged in a Federal Court battle with the Australian Patent Office in an effort to establish the patent-eligibility of many of its gaming-related inventions, recently suffering a setback in the form of a loss on appeal to a Full Bench of the Court.

The leading antipodean applicant is now New Zealand’s Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (which is separate these days from the well-known maker of home appliances).  Fisher & Paykel Healthcare filed 130 Australian standard patent applications in 2021, up from 94 the previous year, to take 7^th place in the rankings.  Ironically, the leading filer of New Zealand patent applications in 2021 was Australian medical device manufacturer Resmed, with 142 filings, while Fisher & Paykel Healthcare appears to have no interest in patent protection in its domestic market.  Meanwhile, Resmed followed the opposite trans-Tasman strategy, filing just 28 applications in its home market of Australia.

No other Australian (or New Zealand) applicant appeared in the top 30 filers for 2021.  The next highest Australian applicant, after Aristocrat, was the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), with 52 applications, followed by NewSouth Innovations (the University of New South Wales’ commercialisation arm) on 30.  The Australian top five was rounded out by Resmed (28) and Breville (27).

The top three filers of provisional applications were CSIRO (56), Resmed (51), and NewSouth Innovations (47).

Innovation patent filings were dominated, in the final few months of full operation of the system, by Chinese and Indian applicants, of which the top two were China’s Qingdao Agricultural University, and the delightfully-named Lovely Professional University in India.  The leading ‘credible’ filers of innovation patent applications in 2021 were US-based Calerpillar Inc (31 filings), agricultural chemical developer Imtrade Australia (26 filings), and Australian radio technology company Benelec (14 filings).

Read on for full tables of the leading filers for each application type.

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics

Australian Patent Filings Up in 2021, Aided by Innovation Patent’s Demise

This article was updated on 11 February 2022 to correct errors in some of the filing numbers.  I have also published a brief explanation and summary of the most significant changes.

The number of standard patent applications filed in Australia exceeded 30,000 for the first time in 2021, increasing by more than 10% over the previous year, and following on from two successive years of decline.  Growth came through both direct national filings and PCT national phase entry (NPE) filings.  Standard application filings by Australian residents experienced particularly strong growth, increasing by 26% over 2020 numbers, while applications by foreign residents grew by just over 9%.

At first blush this looks like good news for Australian applicants, and thus for innovation in Australia.  But the headline figures conceal a distorting influence on filing behaviour in 2021, namely the phasing out of the innovation patent system.  It was entirely predictable that thousands of new innovation patent applications would be filed in the weeks leading up to the final deadline of 25 August 2021.  What might have been less obvious is that the beginning-of-the-end of the innovation patent system would also lead to a spike in filings of new standard patent applications.  Australian residents, in particular, filed more than six times as many direct standard applications in August 2021 as compared with a ‘normal’ month, accounting for a significant proportion of the overall growth in resident filings for the year.  All of these applications with a filing date on or before 25 August 2021 are able to provide a basis for future divisional innovation patent filings, for as long as they remain pending, and up to the final expiry date of the innovation patent system on 25 August 2029.

The down side of this boost in Australian resident filings, assuming that they indeed represent applications brought forward to beat the innovation patent deadline, is that we should expect to see a corresponding decline in the coming 12 months, just as we did following introduction of the Raising the Bar patent reforms in 2013.

Provisional filings suffered a further decline – the largest since 2013 – of nearly 12%.  No doubt this can also be attributed at least partly to the phase out of the innovation patent system, with some applicants electing to file an innovation or standard application directly, prior to 26 August 2021, rather than file a provisional application as a basis for a future priority claim.  The 2013 drop in provisional filings was similarly influenced by a desire to get a standard patent application into the system, and request examination, prior to commencement of the Raising the Bar patent law reforms.  But even accounting for these disruptions, provisional filings have been in a general decline for many years, and 2021 looks to be a continuation of that trend.  Provisional applications are filed almost exclusively by Australian residents, so this is not a good sign for the state of innovation and IP protection in Australia.

In a surprising turn of events, the growth in standard filings by Chinese applicants did not continue in 2021.  Following a number of consecutive years of significant growth, I had previously predicted that 2021 could be the year in which filings by Chinese applicants surpassed those of Australian residents.  But the jump in Australian filings combined with flat filings from China to defeat that expectation.  (For now.)

Australians have therefore remained the second largest users of their own patent system, with US residents once again being overwhelmingly the top filers.  Standard applications from the US increased by 11.5% in 2021, following a 1.6% decline in 2020.  Of the other members of the top five countries of origin – China, Japan, and Germany – only Japan experienced a decline in 2021.

But enough with the summary – let’s look at some charts and tables!

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Tags: Annual patent data, Australia, Patent analytics