World Cities Ranked by Patent Productivity

Today's Globe and Mail published an interesting list of 24 cities ranked by the number of U.S. patents per 100,000 population. The top ranked Canadian city was Vancouver (11th), followed by Toronto (12th), Calgary (13th), Montreal (15th) and Halifax (20th). Seven of the top ten cities were in the U.S. There were some surprising omissions. Houston, for example, didn't make the list despite its high patent output. And San Diego and the Research Triangle area in North Carolina, home to many research universities and biotech companies, were also missing.

It's easy to dismiss such rankings as U.S.-centric because they're based only on USPTO data. But the fact is that many Canadian inventors and companies file applications first in the U.S. According to the USPTO's Fiscal Year 2010 annual report, Canadians filed 11,250 applications in 2009. In comparison, the CIPO received 5,215 patent applications from Canadian residents in 2009-2010.

It would be interesting to re-calculate this list based on PCT data from PatentScope. Cities with high filings of PCT patent applications per 100K pop. might indicate concentrations of companies with global rather than national or regional patent strategies.

New Database of IP Case Studies

The WIPO has launched a new database that contains profiles of intellectual property case studies from around the world. The collection of 100+ cases cover patents, trade marks and copyright and could be an excellent source of material for presentations and programs.

Fostering Canadian Innovation

Today's Globe and Mail has another op-ed piece arguing that Canada needs to do better at promoting innovation and investing in R&D. ("Innovation is Our Hidden Deficit") It's probably true that Canada could do more at home to support innovation and the commercialization of new products. But the picture improves when you look at Canada's performance on the world stage.

For example, Canadian inventors and companies file more patent applications in the U.S. than they do in Canada. In 2007-2008, Canadian inventors filed 11,436 new patent applications with the USPTO but only 5,086 with the CIPO. This is not surprising given that most Canadian companies are eager to protect their IP in the US market. A strong portfolio of US patents will foster new partnerships, investments and business opportunities.