Energy News Monitoring

The IP5 Global Dossier Task Force (GDTF) released another progress report on the patent activity of the five leading patent offices of the world (IP5 Offices) in 2019. A total of 2.7 million patent applications were filed and 1.25 million patents were granted at USPTO (USA), EPO (Europe), CNIPA (China), JPO (Japan) and KIPO (South Korea). As for patent applications, there is a slight decrease in the number of documents – one year earlier in 2018, 100 thousand more documents were registered. At the same time, there was a noticeable increase in the number of patents granted – by more than 6%, with 1.25 million patents issued. Considering that patent granting, i.e. the time which elapses between filing and issuing, usually takes several years, it is obvious that there was a significant decrease in patent activity in terms of creating new technical solutions. This finding accords with earlier data from WIPO (World Intellectual Property Indicators 2020), which reported a 3.0% decrease in the total number of patent applications worldwide and a 5.5% increase in the number of patents granted.

GDTF also indicated in the report that at the end of 2018, 91% of the 13.9 million patents that were in force were valid in one of the IP5 Offices jurisdictions, whereby 29% accounted for EPO, 22% for USPTO, 17% for CNIPA, 15% for JPO, and 7% for KIPO.

The most significant reduction in the number of patent applications filed occurred in CNIPA (-9.2%), mainly due to the residents of China. A slight decline in the number of applications was also recorded in Japan. The remaining offices had a slight increase in the number of registered applications in 2019. All IP5 patent offices saw an increase in the number of granted patents, except for JPO.

Serious changes also affected the statistical data on patent activity in some industries directly or indirectly related to energy. First of all, it is necessary to note a sharp decrease in the number of patent applications filed with the Chinese Patent Office in the field of “Electrical machinery, apparatus, energy”, which amounted to 19%. Partial compensation here was demonstrated by EPO, where there was an increase of 6%.

An even more tangible drop was recorded by the Chinese patent office in the sectors "Chemical engineering" (–32%) and "Other special machines" (–35%), which are indirectly related to the energy sector. The situation was somewhat calmer in the "Transport" sector, where for the five offices overall, the decline in patent applications at CNIPA (–10%) was almost completely offset by the other patent offices. Unfortunately, the GDTF report does not include data on such sectors as "Environmental technology" and "Engines, pumps, turbines". Nevertheless, global patent activity in the energy sector declined markedly in 2019, and probably noticeably more than for the summary statistics.