Thomson Reuters' World IP Today: Technology Innovations and Patent Activity in 2007

Thomson Reuters has launched a new series of reports under the title, World IP Today. Here's the first two reports:

Global Technology Innovations in 2007 (pdf). Key Study Findings:

• Four areas of technology are truly exemplary in protecting high volumes of inventions: consumer electronics, computing, telecommunications and entertainment and business services technology.
• Protection for computing inventions in the three largest markets, Japan, the U.S. and Europe, has been more prevalent than in other technology sectors.
• Innovation within the computing industry is far more evenly distributed between countries than with other technologies.
• Of the top ten patent assignees based on innovations filed in the United States, Europe and Japan during 2007, most are from Japan.
• When we delve deeper into the technology produced by the top ten patentees, we find some interesting changes in the volumes between 2001 and 2007. Specifically, there has been a significant drop in innovation within the industrial and audio/visual and data recording sectors, as well as a dramatic fall in the semiconductors field which decreased by 26% between 2001 and 2007.

Global Patent Activity in 2007 (pdf). Key Study Findings:

• Global patent activity has grown by 21% between 2003 and 2006, with 2007 shaping up as another year of growth for patents.
• Japan is still the world’s leading filer of patents, but continues to decline slowly. Its lead over the U.S. and China is eroding as their patenting activity increases.
• Academic innovations are at their highest ratio in China and Russia where they represent nearly 25% of total patenting activity.
• South Korea safeguards more inventions worldwide than ever before, while the U.S. has greatly decreased the number of patents it files across the key patent regions.

[JH]