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Asian Nations Show Big Patent Growth
by Winter Casey and Theresa Poulson
The number of patent applications being filed is growing at the fastest rate in North East Asian countries, according to the 2007 edition of the World Intellectual Property Organization's patent report.
"While patent filings by residents of North East Asian countries have been growing at high rates for more than 10 years, filings abroad by residents of those countries have only started to appear in significant numbers in recent years," the report concluded. It singled out China and South Korea among those nations.
The research also said countries such as Brazil, India, Israel and South Africa have increased their patent filings abroad.
Patent filings worldwide have increased at an average annual rate of 4.7 percent, while the number of patents granted has increased 3.6 percent, the report found. The study, which relied on 2005 figures, determined that by the end of 2005 some 5.6 million patents had been approved.
The most patent filings in the world have occurred in China, Japan, the United States and European Patent Office. "We have witnessed a significant increase in the use of the patent system internationally in recent years," WIPO Director-General Kamil Idris said in a statement.
The report also found an increase in the use of the Patent Cooperation Treaty, a multilateral pact administered by WIPO that offers a simplified system for international filings. The number of such applications filed under the treaty increased by 7.9 percent from 2005 to 2006. The United States, Japan and Germany filed the most patents under it.
With so many applications being filed, patent offices around the world have struggled to meet the demand. The United States had more than 900,000 patents pending in 2005, and Japan had more than 800,000 pending the, the report found. "The workload at certain patent offices has increased faster than the capacity to examine patent applications," according to the research.
"Increasing demand for patents has led to a marked expansion in workload in some patent offices, and this has created a number of challenges for the patenting community," WIPO Deputy Director-General Francis Gurry said. "The added pressure under which many patent offices are operating has highlighted the extent of duplication of effort in the system."
He added, "Finding common ground within the international community on how to overcome these bottlenecks is clearly a priority for users of the system who are seeking affordable and efficient IP services."
Around the world, 38 percent of patent applications are filed by non-residents, and the number is rising, the report found.
China Unveils E-Patent System
China formally launched its electronic patent project in Beijing on Aug. 1, according to the country's patent office.
Yang Tiejun, deputy commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, said the system is an "important platform to implement the national intellectual property strategy" and a primary guarantee to vault China's patent office into "one of the better IP offices in the world." Yang, who heads the project, said the collaboration of various groups would result in "a world-class patent e-examination system that suits China's specific needs."
"The system is designed to enable everything corresponding to all the patent examination proceedings to run in one central electronic network," according to the patent office. "Trial operation is scheduled next August, and full operation is set at next year's end."
Europe OKs Intel, STMicroelectronics Venture
The European Union this week authorized a proposed joint venture between chip makers Intel and STMicroelectronics, concluding that it would not violate antitrust laws.
The two firms plan to sell flash memory, a type of computer memory that is widely used in data-storage cards, mobile telephones and other portable devices. The regulators' market investigation revealed that there are strong competitors for each of the two principal kinds of flash memory products available on the market. They also found that customers would be able to continue sourcing their needs from various alternative vendors.
U.S.-based Intel will receive $432 million in cash for its flash unit, and French/Italian STMicroelectronics will sell its entire flash memory operation for $468 million, AP reported.
The market for such chips has been troubled, AP reported. Overall revenues were $8.3 billion last year, but the entire segment was unable to turn a profit. The units owned by Intel and STMicroelectronics made $3.6 billion combined in sales last year.
The European Commission recently charged Intel with monopoly abuse for blocking rival computer-chip maker Advanced Micro Devices from accessing customers. Regulators claim that Intel gave "substantial rebates" to computer makers for buying most of a certain kind of processing unit from Intel and engaged in other anti-competitive practices.
Intel has denied any wrongdoing.
European System Helps Tackle Health Threat
During a recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom, a new electronic system developed by the European Commission helped inform public health officials about the crisis, according to a statement.
The system detected a sudden jump in news reports on the illness and automatically notified officials throughout Europe via e-mail and text-messaging.
By crawling the Web for keywords that may signal disease outbreaks, the system aims to identify public health threats. It searches information from 1,000 news and 120 public health Web sites in 32 languages, and orders data in three categories: diseases, bioterrorism and other threats.
The data then is further classified into more specific subcategories such as AIDS-HIV, avian flu or nuclear safety. Once news reports reach a certain level, automated alerts are triggered.
An automatic incident-detection system also has been implemented in partnership with the University of Helsinki in Finland. It analyzes English news reports and extracts data on the number of cases, the locations and the dates. The information then is logged automatically into the incident database used by European Union nations and the European Commission.
EU citizens also have free access to the tool, which includes alert statistics, articles in various languages and e-mail alerts.
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