2008 World Patent Report

The WIPO recently released its 2008 World Patent Report, which contains all kinds of interesting statistics on patent activity worldwide. In 2006, a stunning 1.76 million new applications were filed worldwide, driven largely by filings in China, Korea and the U.S.

One of the most interesting sections covers patent filings per GDP, population and R&D. Both Japan (#1) and Korea (#2) had more than 2000 new resident applications per million population. (Japan 127 million pop. = / Korea pop. = 49 million) The U.S. (#3) managed just shy of 800 resident filings per million (with a pop. of 300 million). In R&D, Korea was the leader again, with slightly more than 5 applications per million $ of R&D funding. Russia, Japan, China and (surprisingly) New Zealand rounded out the top five. The US ranked #7 and Canada #29. Clearly, Asia is keen on generating IP.

All this demand is creating huge problems for patent offices. In 2006, the USPTO had more that one million pending applications, a 30% increase over 2004. Japan has about 800K pending applications, up from 600K in 2004. The EPO, on the other hand, has about 250,000 pending applications, which is about the same as 2004 and 2005. It takes about 40 months on average for the EPO to process an application but only 30 months at the JPO and USPTO. The Korean IP Office processes applications in about 20 months.

Review: Japanese-English Chemical Dictionary

Japanese-English Chemical Dictionary: Including a Guide to Japanese Patents and Scientific Literature. Edited by Markus Gewehr. Wiley-VCH, 2007. 680 p. $230 ISBN 978-3527312931

My library just received a copy of this very impressive reference work. The bulk of the book consists of a dictionary of more than 60,000 Japanese scientific and technical terms. I don't read Japanese, but it appears very comprehensive and useful to anyone attempting to read Japanese patents and journal articles. The first part of the book consists of a half dozen chapters. Chapter 1 is an overview of the Japanese language. Chapter 2 describes the characteristics of Japanese scientific and technical publications. Chapter 3 covers naming chemical compounds. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on Japanese patent documentation and patent law. For me, these were the most interesting and useful sections. Chapter 4, Patent Documentation, was written by the editor, Markus Gewehr, and Irene Schellner of the Japanese Patent Information unit in the European Patent Office. This chapter has a tremendous amount of detailed information about the history and evolution of Japanese patent documents, search systems and numbering systems. Numerous tables provide details about kind codes, INID codes, headlines, etc. There's also a good overview of the Japanese special classification systems known as the File Index (FI) and File Forming Terms (F-terms).