Today, staying ahead of competitors means more than just protecting your intellectual property—it requires understanding the bigger picture. Many of our clients think of patent landscapes as tools for avoiding infringement, identifying acquisition targets, or finding white space for new inventions. While they are excellent for these purposes, patent landscapes can also uncover broader trends, providing insights into competitor strategies, emerging technologies, and shifts in global patent filing activity.
One recurring topic that caught our attention at TPR is the discussion about a potential slowdown in global patent filings. Whether these trends are real or perceived, they underscore the importance of contextualizing patent data to guide strategic decisions. By analyzing patent landscapes, you can benchmark your position against competitors, identify untapped opportunities, and prepare for industry shifts.
As professional patent searchers, we often help clients focus on specific companies or technologies. However, applying these methodologies on a broader scale can reveal valuable insights into industry-wide or global patenting behavior.
In this article, we’ll explore how patent landscape strategies can help you decode trends, uncover actionable insights for your IP strategy, and evaluate claims about a broader slowdown in patent filings.
Conflicting Headlines: A Snapshot of the Global Patent Filing Slowdown Narrative
Reports from analytics firms paint a bleak picture of global patent filings for select industries:
Consumer Industry: A 17% quarter-to-quarter decline in filings in Q3 2024 (source: Just Drinks) (1).- Medical Devices: A steeper 23% decline in the same period, marking a 25% drop year-on-year (source: Medical Device Network) (2).
- Banking and Payments: A 13% drop from Q2 to Q3 2024, with an 11% year-on-year decrease (source: Retail Banker) (3).
These figures, while concerning, rely heavily on quarter-to-quarter comparisons and sector-specific snapshots. Additionally, they often depend on a single analytics company’s proprietary data and opaque methodologies. One possible data source is a mixture of unpublished or privately held application data—which raises questions about the consistency and scope of their findings. This narrow approach is useful for niche insights but less helpful for understanding global or cross-sector trends.
A more comprehensive assessment from Reuters, citing WIPO data, states that global PCT filings in 2023 fell by 1.8%, the first decline in 14 years. However, PCT filings represent only about 7.6% of worldwide filings, and the drop primarily stemmed from filers in the two largest jurisdictions, the U.S. and China. (4)
The Bigger Picture: What Does the Data Really Say?
A global patent filing slowdown cannot be confirmed without examining longer-term trends across regions and industries.
Growth Through 2023
- According to the IP5 (USPTO, EPO, JPO, KIPO, and CNIPO), 2023 showed strong growth, with global filings surpassing 3 million for the first time, a 3% increase from 2022. (5)
- WIPO also reported record-breaking numbers worldwide, with total applications exceeding 3.5 million for the year, marking the fourth consecutive year of growth. (6)
2024: A Mixed Bag So Far
- USPTO: Reported record U.S. filings for fiscal year 2024 (ending September).
- Broader Innovation Trends: Recent signs are mixed, and global filing may not follow the overall USPTO trend.
Exploring Indicators: Non-Patent Literature (NPL) and R&D Spending
Does Academic Publication Trend with Patent Filing?
A potential way to predict future global patent filing trends is by viewing academic and technical journal publications as both a leading indicator of future patent publications and a lagging indicator of patent filings. Researchers, eager to share their work, are often required to wait until relevant patents are filed before publishing. However, newly filed patents typically remain unpublished for up to 18 months. Consequently, historical trends in total non-patent literature (NPL) publication counts are expected to align with patent filing trends. Changes in annual NPL publication counts, therefore, could signal corresponding shifts in global patent filings and later patent publications.
Procedure: First, NPL data was collected via Patbase from the following resources: Agricola, Agris, PubMed, WorldWideScience, Science.gov, CiteSeerX, CrossRef, Springer Link, and Google Scholar. Total available publications were grouped by publication year – no efforts were made to further sort or filter these hits. Next, patent data was collected on Patbase according to family count where the family has a new application which was filed in a given year. Data for both NPL and patents was collected from 1990 through 2023 (2022 for patents).
Figure 1. Families with New Patent Applications Filed vs New Non-Patent Literature Publications 1990 – 2023 (Data Source: Patbase)
*Note: This chart, and all subsequent charts, gives a total count of patent families which include a new patent application within the given year – not new families.
Although NPL publications outnumber patent applications by about three times, the two trends closely align over this period. We also see a dip in both in recent years (2023 patent data not included). We should check our assumptions, however, as the dip in NPL publications follows the patent dip, rather than preceding or coinciding with it. There may be a longer lag between a filing and the corresponding academic publication than previously thought.
Does R&D Spending Predict Future Global Patent Filing?
Another potential indicator of future patent activity is corporate R&D expenditure. It isn’t uncommon that clients might conduct a landscape analysis of the patent filings of a competitor to infer their R&D spending. We conducted a reverse-landscape analysis, correlating patent filings with R&D spending (when available) for the following 31 companies in an effort to anticipate future filing count.
Medical Device
- Medtronic
- Abbott Laboratories
- Siemens Healthineers
- Stryker
- Becton Dickinson
- Boston Scientific
Consumer Industry
- The Procter & Gamble Co.
- Nestle SA
Banking (Patent data only)
- JPMorgan Chase
- Bank of America
- Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
- Agricultural Bank of China
- Wells Fargo
Other IP-Active Worldwide Leaders
- Samsung
- Qualcomm
- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC)
- IBM
- Canon Inc
- Apple Inc
- LG Electronics
- Micron Technology
- Intel Corp
- Huawei Technologies
- Toyota Motor
- Google Inc
- Microsoft Corp
- BOE Technology
- Kia Motors
- Hyundai Motor
- Ford
- Dell Inc
Procedure: These companies were selected because their R&D and patent data was relatively easy to access for the time period of interest, and their combined patent applications exceeded 138 thousand in 2022 (the most recent year for which complete data is available) and they account for about 4% of all applications worldwide. The sampling from the medical device, consumer and banking industries is meant to dig in on the specific technology sectors from the articles cited above, while the remainder of the list is meant to be reflective of the broader patent landscape.
R&D spending data was collected from each company’s annual financial reports covering 2014 to 2023. For amounts reported in currencies other than US dollars, conversions were made using current exchange rates.
Counts of families with new patent applications were retrieved from PatBase using straightforward search strings. The company was listed as the assignee, and date restrictions were applied for each year with complete data available (up to 2022). The data was not refined to capture patents listed under alternate assignees but still belonging to the same company, nor were false positives removed.
“Families with new patent applications” includes a variety of filings, such as first-filed applications, continuing U.S. applications, secondary filings in non-U.S. jurisdictions, PCT applications, and PCT national stage applications. Many of these may not directly result from additional R&D spending. This approach is not intended to be precise or comprehensive but rather to provide approximate figures suitable for broad generalizations in the context of this article.
Important Note: Including all members of a patent family may reflect the significance of an invention or, in some cases, higher R&D spending for that invention. These may still be considered in this type of landscape study. However, for a more detailed analysis, we recommend filtering results to show only the total number of new patent families (i.e., first publications of a new invention) in any jurisdiction, as this may better correlate with R&D spending.
Nuances like these are critical to consider for each project. While TPR is capable of conducting detailed analyses, for this article, we used “counts of patent families containing a new patent application” because this data was more readily accessible.
Assessing the Strategy
Broadly speaking, companies fell into one of two groupings.
Group 1 – Tightly Correlated Companies
Most of the companies we assessed consistently linked increased R&D spend with higher patent filings. Some examples follow.
Figure 2. Canon R&D Spend vs Families with New Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: Canon Annual Financial Statements, Patbase)
Figure 3. LG R&D Spend vs Families with New Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: LG Annual Financial Statements, Patbase)
Figure 4. Huawei R&D Spend vs Families with New Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: Huawei Annual Financial Statements, Patbase)
Figure 5. Toyota R&D Spend vs Families with New Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: Toyota Annual Financial Statements, Patbase)
Group 2 – Looser Correlations
Companies like Qualcomm, IBM, and Dell exhibited greater variability, with R&D spending not always closely aligned with patent application filings. This discrepancy may stem from factors such as unique filing strategies, merger and acquisition activity, and subsequent reassignment of patent portfolios.
Figure 6. Qualcomm R&D Spend vs Families with New Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: Qualcomm Annual Financial Statements, Patbase)
Figure 7. IBM R&D Spend vs Families with New Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: IBM Annual Financial Statements, Patbase)
Figure 8. Dell R&D Spend vs Families with New Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: Dell Annual Financial Statements, Patbase)
Aggregate Trends
2023 marked an all-time high for R&D spending among all 31 listed companies, suggesting strong patenting activity may continue in 2024.
Figure 9. Broad Company Sample Aggregate R&D Spend vs Families with Patent Applications Filed 2014-2023 (Data Source: company financial filings and Patbase)
In the aggregate, both R&D spending and patent application filing appears to be on a positive trend, which we might be inclined to expect to continue through 2023 and 2024.
Sector-Specific vs. Global Filing Trends
The broader indicators are mixed and seem to suggest future growth is probable, it’s possible some sectors (e.g., medical devices, consumer goods) are experiencing localized slowdowns:
- Quarter-to-quarter fluctuations are not uncommon in IP.
- Sector-specific counter-trends are expected.
The three industries specified in the articles mentioned above were banking, consumer, and medical device. We examine those below.
Banking Industry
In looking at the five largest banking firms worldwide, R&D spend is more difficult to extract from financial filings, so we limit this view strictly to patent filing information.
Figure 10. Banking Industry Families with Patent Applications Filed by Year 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: Patbase)
While the Chinese banks are accelerating their new patent filings in recent years, the top US banks have trended toward fewer new patent filings annually. This trend could continue through 2024, and would be consistent with the quarterly observations made in the articles above. Note: 2023 patent data is incomplete at this time, and the chart will show greater totals for 2023 once all the patent data becomes available.
Consumer Industry
Two firms were selected to represent the consumer industry, those being Procter & Gamble and Nestle. Their aggregate data for both R&D and patent application activity follows.
Figure 11. Consumer Industry Sample Company Aggregate R&D Spend vs Families with Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: company financial filings and Patbase)
The patent applications appear to be trending downward, however in recent years R&D spend has rebounded to trend upward. We might be inclined to expect patent application activity to follow. This might seem to contradict the quarterly data.
Medical Device Industry
Figure 12. Med Device Sample Company Aggregate R&D Spend vs Families with Patent Applications Filed 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: company financial filings and Patbase)
R&D and patent application filings appear to trend together quite closely for this group. We do see a steep decline in R&D spending with this group, which again might suggest a dip in new patent applications filed for 2024. Again, this appears consistent with the quarterly data.
Worth noting, for this group, most representative companies maintained similar R&D spend to prior years, with the exception of Siemens Healthineers which saw a large drop in R&D spend last year:
Figure 13. Siemens Healthineers R&D Spend vs Families with New Patent Applications 2014 – 2023 (Data Source: Siemens Healthineers financial filings and Patbase)
The drop by this single company brought the average of the entire group down. Ignoring Siemens Healthineers as an outlier, the R&D spending trend looks positive, and incomplete patent application data from 2023 still appears to be growing over prior years.
What This Means for Your IP Strategy
- Stay Informed, Not Reactive
Be cautious about basing decisions on quarter-specific data. The bigger picture can sometimes tell a different story. - Embrace Reverse-Landscaping
Insights into R&D spending and competitor activity can help you anticipate filing trends. Consider leveraging patent searches as predictive tools—not just to analyze past activity but to inform future strategies. - Partner With Experts
At TPR, we specialize in turning complex patent landscapes into actionable insights. Whether you’re tracking global trends, conducting competitive intelligence, or assessing R&D investments, our tailored searches ensure you stay ahead of the curve.
Looking Ahead: Record-Breaking or Slowdown of Global Patent Filings?
Returning to the main question – the jury is still out on whether 2024 will ultimately be a record-breaking year or a momentary plateau for global patent filings. However, the data suggests that the broader innovation ecosystem remains robust, and that Betteridge’s law of headlines (any headline that ends in a question mark can typically be answered with “no”) may possibly hold. Staying ahead requires reliable information, deep expertise, and a proactive approach to patent and literature searches.
Every company has unique needs and challenges that a well-executed landscape search can address, e.g. various aspects of technology and competitor tracking. This article only begins to explore the valuable insights such studies can uncover. Let TPR be your trusted partner in navigating the dynamic and evolving patent landscape. Contact our team today to learn how we can help strengthen your IP strategy.
References
- “Patent activity in the consumer industry decreased in Q3 2024.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.just-drinks.com/dashboards/patents/patent-activity-consumer-industry/?cf-view
- “Patent activity in the medical industry decreased in Q3 2024.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.medicaldevice-network.com/data-insights/patent-activity-medical-industry/
- “Q2 2024 update: patent activity in the banking & payments industry.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.retailbankerinternational.com/data-insights/patent-activity-banking-payments-industry/?cf-view
- “UN data: Global patent filings drop nearly 2% as innovation falters.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/un-data-global-patent-filings-drop-nearly-2-innovation-falters-2024-03-07/
- “IP5 statistics reports.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.fiveipoffices.org/statistics
- “World Intellectual Property Indicators Report: Global Patent Filings Reach Record High in 2023.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2024/article_0015.html
- “USPTO Fiscal Year 2024 Data.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/other_sites.htm
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