Per Hal Wegner, the total number of original applications filed in China in 2013 was over 2 million. See his note here. The total number of new applications in the U.S. that year was about 272,000, roughly 1/8th the Chinese total. Granted, the Chines are heavy users of utility models and designs. But still….
That China has become such a heavy user of the patent system might not come as a total surprise. But, that the US is well behind Japan and Germany — and even behind France! — is very concerning. I would have expected much stronger performance, much more comparable to Japan and Germany, and perhaps a bit better than those countries.
Patents inventions made in the US generally must, generally speaking, be filed first in the US. I suspect that most, if not all, Chinese applicants file first in China. Therefore, one might naturally ask, is the US performance simply due to less innovation occurring in the US, or is there something going in the US patent system that discourages filing of new applications on inventions being made here in the US? I can’t help but to think that the innovation in the US is at least comparable to that of Germany and Japan.
Perhaps these statistics are misleading. But Chinese companies will clearly will very likely posses a lot more patents than US companies in the future. It seems to me that US companies could find themselves at big a competitive disadvantage internationally in coming years if this trend continues.
The Hub of IP 