Patent Law

The following News & Trends reports appeared at EE Times Asia on June 2, 2008:

In a year that saw a record number of filings under the World Intellectual Property Organization Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), inventors from South Korea and China consolidated their top 10 positions in 2007, along with the United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom., the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden. There were 156,100 applications filed in 2007, representing 4.7 percent growth over the previous year.

For the fourth year running, the most notable growth rates came from countries in northeast Asia, which accounted for over a quarter of all international applications under the PCT.

South Korea, which experienced 18.8 percent growth in 2007 over 2006, overtook France to become the fourth biggest country of origin of PCT filings. Applicants from China, whose use grew by 38.1 percent, dislodged the Netherlands to take seventh spot.

...the largest proportions of PCT applications published last year were related to telecommunications (10.5 percent), IT (10.1 percent) and pharmaceuticals (9.3 percent). The fastest growing technology areas were nuclear engineering (24.5 percent) and telecommunications (15.5 percent).

See the full article here.