TURKEY: Top Increase Rate In Domestic Patent Filings Across The Globe

Patent applications worldwide grew by 5.8% to 3.17 million in 2017, compared to the previous year, according to WIPO’s annual World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report published on December 3, 2018.

Of the top 20 patent offices, 11 received a greater number of patent applications in 2017 than in 2016, while nine received fewer. Turkey (+24.9%) and China (+14.2%) are the only two offices to have experienced double-digit increase, both driven mainly by growth in resident applications.

TURKEY

Number of patent applications in Turkey have increased remarkably to 19,283 in 2017 from 16.778 in 2016 with a growth rate of 14.9%, due to a substantial rise of 33.8% in domestic filings to 8.625 from 6.445 for the same period. Breakdown of filing types reveals that the share of foreign applications into Turkey is 55%, the great majority of which -about 96%- is through “EP validations” route for patent protection (which was not taken into consideration by WIPO statistics).

Turkey’s ranking has moved from 25th position in 2014 to 20th in 2017 due to the double-digit growth for the past three years.

GLOBAL RANKING

China’s IP office received the highest number of patent applications in 2017, a record total of 1.38 million, and followed by the offices of the USA (606,956), Japan (318,479), the Republic of Korea (204,775) and the European Patent Office (166,585).

The top five offices accounted for 84.5% of the world total. Among these offices, China (+14.2%) and the EPO (+4.5%) saw strong growth in filings, while Japan (+0.03%) and the U.S. (+0.2%) saw negligible growth. The Republic of Korea (-1.9%) received fewer applications in 2017 than in 2016.

Germany (67,712), India (46,582), the Russian Federation (36,883), Canada (35,022) and Australia (28,906) also featured among the top 10 offices. Australia (+1.8%), Canada (+0.8%) and India (+3.4%) saw growth in filings, while Germany (-0.3%) and the Russian Federation (-11.3%) experienced a decline in filings.