Trends in Patent Applications

Source: The Economist

It is perhaps interesting to look at this history of patenting. The obvious feature of the chart is that the total patenting activity in these places has expanded greatly in the six decades covered.

In 1950, the United States was dominant. Since that time, while the United has greatly increased its patenting, other countries have also increased rapidly. In fact there was a period of three decades in which Japan out-patented the United States.

The European Patent Office opened in 1978. Before that time individual European nations must have been patenting, but the decimated economies left from World War II would have limited the frequency of inventions in Europe in the period prior to the founding of the European Patent Office.

In the more recent decades one can see the rapid increase of patenting in China, South Korea and more recently India. Even though the rate of patenting in Japan has dropped in recent years, it appears that East Asia is innovating more rapidly than North America of Europe. That may be partly due to the emphasis on manufacturing in East Asian economies as compared to the emphasis on services in North America and Europe.