International Patent Filings: USA 53,521, China 6,089, India 766

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, the U.S. continues to lead international patent filings by a large margin. However patents arising from developing countries have risen rapidly particularly from China. Among developing countries India falls behind Korea and China in such patent filings. But the numbers in the headline above don’t tell the whole story.

Keep in mind that the WIPO’s method does not take  the effects of offshoring and outsourcing. An American company may use its Indian facility or outsource to a vendor to develop the intellectual property, but then choose to file the international patent from the United States. This means that buried in the 53,521 American patents may be thousands where the bulk or all of the work was performed in Mumbai, Hyderabad, or Chennai. It also does not reflect the fact that much of the original work done in developing countries does not results in patents being filed and certainly not in international patents being filed.