International patent filings fell last year for the first time in 14 years, due to higher interest rates and economic uncertainty, the UN said.
A total of 272,600 international patents were filed in 2023, a decrease of 1.8% from the previous year, the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization said in its annual report.
“We believe this reflects the current unfavorable environment for innovation and entrepreneurial activity,” WIPO chief economist Carsten Fink said at a press briefing in Geneva.
However, according to him, this decline must be seen as a “cyclical” phenomenon linked to the economic situation.
“We believe that intellectual property filings will resume once the external environment improves,” he added.
WIPO Director General Daren Tang expects “a resumption of international intellectual property filings later this year.”
“Despite these short-term declines, longer-term trends show that the use of intellectual property is steadily increasing,” driven by increased globalization and digitalization and economic development in more countries.
L’Oréal in the lead in France
For patents filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, or PCT, China remained at the top of the ranking, with 69,610 filings with the figure down 0.6% from 2022, the first for this country since 2002. The United States suffered a more marked decline of 5.3% but remains in second place with 55,678 deposits.
They are followed by Japan, South Korea and Germany respectively.
South Korea is the only one of the big five in the ranking to have filed more patents than in 2022 (+ 1.2% to 22,288).
Note that India shows a spectacular increase in deposits (+ 44.6%) but for a still modest total (3,791).
Among the few other countries that showed growth were Turkey, with an increase of 8.5%, and the Netherlands (+5.8%).
In France, patent filings are up 2%.
And it is the L'Oréal group which arrives for the second year in pole position with 199 requests.
Internationally, the Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei, "remained by far the main applicant", underlined WIPO, with 6,494 applications, followed by the Korean Samsung Electronics (3,924 applications), the American Qualcomm (3,410 requests) and the Japanese Mitsubishi Electric.
By sector, IT technology accounted for the largest share of requests, at 10.2% of the total.