Inventive capacity and innovation potential of different countries

The inventive capacity of a nation can be governed by a multitude of factors including economic, political, social, educational, technological and managerial. However, the number of patents produced by a country generally reflect its inventive capacity, and can be used as an indicator for comparing inventive activity of different countries.

Up to 1960, the patent activities in the world were rather low with an annual growth rate of 1.6%, and were mainly concentrated in the USA, Germany, UK and France. Since 1995, worldwide filings of patent applications have grown at an average annual rate of 4.7 %, reaching a total of more than 1.6 millions in 2005. Presently very high growth rates in the use of the patent system can be observed in North East Asian countries, particularly Republic of Korea and China after 2002. In addition, Brazil, India, Israel and South Africa are also now increasing their patent filings abroad, which is a sign of increasing industrialization and increasing integration of those countries into the worldwide industrial activity.

The Top 10 countries in the world in terms of resident patent filings per million of population in 2005 are given in Table 1. As evident therefrom, Japan and Korea are well ahead of even the USA in terms of per capita patent filing. Here Singapore (131) occupied the 20th position, just after the Netherlands (136) while China (72), the 24th position. The per capita patent filings for Indonesia, Thailand and India were 17, 14 and 6, respectively. Interestingly China showed, by far, the highest increase in per capita patent applications in 2005, i.e.> 40%, compared to that in 2004, displaying its rapidly growing innovation-driven economy.

See Table 1

Table 1: Per capita resident patent

filings in 2005 Country Resident patent filings
per million of population

Japan                    2,876

Republic of Korea     2,530

USA                        701

Germany                  586

Australia                  480

New Zealand             461

Finland                     348

Denmark                   306

UK                           296

Sweden                    279

Patents granted worldwide have increased at an average rate of 3.6% to about 600,000 in 2005. The distribution of those patents among leading countries and some countries in Asia are given in Table 2. As regards, Sri Lanka, the figures given on the website of the National Intellectual Property Office (www.nipo.gov.lk) in terms of patents are much higher than those in the WIPO Annual Report. However, for comparative evaluation of inventive activities of different countries, the statistics given in the WIPO Annual report are used here. See Table 2

Of the 5.6 million patents in force worldwide in 2005, Japan and the USA accounted for 28% (1,613,776) and 21% (1,214,556), respectively. Thus they accounted for about 50% of patents in the world. The highest number of patents granted in 2005 worldwide originated from residents in Japan ( 185,827) followed by USA (134,019), the Republic of Korea (63,000), Germany 48,700), France (22,413) and China (21,519). In addition, it is interesting to note that because of the rapid increases in inventive activities in the world, the workload of certain patent offices has increased beyond their carrying capacity. For instance, the USA had more than 9,000 patent applications pending while Japan had more than 8,000 pending in 2005. This shows the immensity of the inventive activities and the extent to which the knowledge is being been transformed into innovative products, processes and services in those countries. That also shows the formidable challenges and threats our economy has to face if we do not innovate as a nation!

Part III tomorrow

Now, I wish to draw your attention to our country!. According to the WIPO, Sri Lanka had only 5 patents in force in 2005 whereas China, India, Singapore Malaysia and Thailand had, 59087, 2682, 2619, 420 and 161, respectively. The number of patents per one million of population was 0.025 for Sri Lanka in 2005 while it was respectively 4.52, 0.25, 60.32, 1.66 and 0.25 for the above countries. If we dissect these figures further, the inventive activities of China, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are approximately 181, 10, 2413, 66.4 and 10 times higher than that of Sri Lanka. If we consider Japan and Korea, their inventive activities are 50,520 and 29,240 times higher than that of Sri Lanka.