China patents set to rule the world

Applications for new patents in China have increased hugely and will pass Japan, the current leader in new patents, by 2012, according to a report released yesterday by Thomson Reuters Scientific.

The report found that China patents are moving away from traditional agricultural and manufacturing industries and concentrating more on innovation, especially in areas such as chemical engineering.

"China is set to dominate the patent landscape by 2012 ... to become the world's leading innovator," said Bob Stembridge, a Thomson Scientific spokesman. "Inventions from China have been growing at a faster rate than from any region in the world. This has been driven by government incentives," Stembridge said.

These include bonuses worth a year's salary for inventors who receive new patents, said Eve Zhou, the consultant who wrote the report.

"In China, 16 percent of patents come from academia," Zhou said. This compares to 4 percent in the United States and 1 percent in Japan.

"That is because the Chinese government has more direction over the technical areas that should be researched."

Thomson Scientific analyzed the top five patent authorities globally - Japan, the US, Europe, South Korea and China.

It counted the number of new patents filed from 2001 to 2007 and broke them down by how they were filed - by their own nationals to their national patent authority, or by foreign companies seeking patent protection within the country.

"China, from humble beginnings, is experiencing the most rapid growth," Stembridge said.

Japan had the highest total of patent volumes year to year during the period, but the US has been narrowing that lead. For the period, Japan had 37 percent of all new patent applications with 3.5 million. The US had 27 percent, or nearly 2.6 million. China, South Korea and Europe each had 12 percent of the share.

But China's year-to-year growth in the sheer number of patents was marked, the report found.

Based on the previous five years, Thomson Reuters predicted Japan's annual growth rate in new patents would fall from 2 percent to minus 2.7 percent, the US would stay at around 13 percent to 14 percent, but China would surge from 26.8 percent annual growth to 34 percent.