In this article, we will be taking a look at the 25 countries with the most patent grants in 2023. To skip our detailed analysis, you can go directly to see the 5 countries with the most patent grants in 2023.
Patent reforms in developing nations
Countries across the world are continually locked in a race to continue to improve advancements in all fields, which gives them much more significant economic power and hence, greater global influence and wealth. This is why you’ll notice a lot in common in the countries with the most patent grants in 2023 and the most innovative countries in the world. While intellectual property rights are a controversial issue depending on countries, many nations are now looking at developing nations to register patents in, and take advantage of new, fast-growing markets. Almost all of the fastest growing countries in the world are in the developing world and provide an incredible opportunity for investment, despite the dangers and risks associated with it as well, which you can see in the most dangerous countries in the world. This is one of the reasons why the World Trade Organization earlier adopted the Trade Related Intellectual Property Standards (TRIPS) in a bid to establish uniform IP standards, and many developing countries are also creating IP protection systems including China and India ,both of which are among the countries with the most patent grants in 2023.
Copyright: racorn / 123RF Stock Photo
A study conducted by the American Economic Review carried out this investigation back in 2016, determining what the impact of enforcing strict regulation on medicines in developing countries would lead to. According to the World Bank, if major pharmaceutical companies have monopoly rights through patents, then prices will logically increase based on economic theory and most people will be unable to access necessary medication. This is why TRIPS is a very controversial system especially in developing countries and many policymakers are worried that giving foreign pharmaceutical companies long-term patent rights will stifle innovation in developing nations. On the other hand, the counterargument is that if such pharmaceutical companies are unable to exercise their patent rights, they have no reason to increase or even establish their presence, and hence, will deprive developing countries with advanced technology needed to improve their standards of living. A lack of ambition for companies will result in growth rates declining and share price falling, leading to losses for investors, and will have a negative impact even on the countries with the highest number of patent grants.
Most innovative companies
This is also why companies continue to innovate. While there are some companies that will undoubtedly remain in existent despite not being very innovative, for most companies to survive, innovation is not just important but absolutely necessary. Unsurprisingly, companies in the tech sector are generally considered among the most innovative companies in the world and currently, AI has become the focus of many major tech companies especially in the countries with the most patent grants in 2023. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) has been known for its graphics processing units but its shift to becoming a leading AI company has seen NVIDIA Corporation’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) share price rise by 221% YTD and is one of the very few corporations globally to surpass a $1 trillion market cap. This was called out by NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its Q2 2024 earnings call stating “There is tremendous demand for Nvidia accelerated computing and AI platforms. Our supply partners have been exceptional in ramping capacity to support our needs. Our data center supply chain, including HGX, with 35,000 parts and highly complex networking, has been built up over the past decade. We have also developed and qualified additional capacity and suppliers for key steps in the manufacturing process such as co-op packaging. We expect supply to increase each quarter through next year. By geography, data center growth was strongest in the U.S. as customers direct their capital investments to AI and accelerated computing. China’s demand was within the historical range of 20% to 25% of our data center revenue, including compute and networking solutions.” This has allowed it to be counted among the most profitable tech stocks in 2023 and has become the favorite of many funds in recent times with Mairs & Power Growth Fund making the following comment about NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its second quarter 2023 investor letter:
“Regarding stock selection in the first half, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) was a massive outperformer, up 189.54%. Amazon and Microsoft were also positive contributors, up 55.19% and 42.66%, respectively. All three stocks benefited from a renewed interest in growth stocks by investors in the first half of the year. Nvidia is the leading provider of processors used for artificial intelligence (AI) computation for both learning and inferencing, and its stock rallied significantly on a massive earnings report in the first quarter as cloud data center companies invested heavily in AI.”
Similarly, after a poor 2022, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) has also experienced a resurgence in 2023, with its share pricing increasing by nearly 130% YTD. This improvement has also largely been attributed to AI, with the company stating in its Q2 2023 earnings call “Moving onto our product roadmap, I’ve said on a number of these calls that the two technological waves that we’re riding are AI in the near term and the metaverse over the longer term. Investments that we’ve made over the years in AI, including the billions of dollars we’ve spent on AI infrastructure, are clearly paying off across our ranking and recommendation systems and improving engagement and monetization. AI-recommended content from accounts you don’t follow is now the fastest growing category of content on Facebook’s feed. Since introducing these recommendations, they have driven a 7% increase in overall time spent on the platform. This improves the experience because you can now discover things that you might not have otherwise followed or come across. Reels is a key part of this Discovery Engine, and Reels plays exceed 200 billion per day across Facebook and Instagram. We’re seeing good progress on Reels monetization as well, with the annual revenue run-rate across our apps now exceeding $10 billion, up from $3 billion last fall. Beyond Reels, AI is driving results across our monetization tools through our automated ads products, which we call Meta Advantage. Almost all our advertisers are using at least one of our AI-driven products. We’ve also deployed Meta Lattice, a new model architecture that learns to predict an ad’s performance across a variety of datasets and optimization goals. And we introduced AI Sandbox, a testing playground for generative AI-powered tools like automatic text variation, background generation, and image outcropping.”
It should then come as no surprise that AI is one of the hottest areas in patent applications, and from 2002 to 2018, patents pertaining to AI jumped by well over 100%, though the highest increase in AI patents only came recently in 2022, seeing an annual growth rate of 28%, with Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) topping the list of EU patents, though overall Samsung has the highest number of patents, and Samsung Electronics has seen its share price jump by 20% YTD.
Methodology
To determine the countries with the most patent grants, we only considered countries which received a high number of grants, as the application to grants ratio can vary significantly. We obtained our data from the World Intellectual Property Organization, considering total patents granted from 2010 to 2021, the latest year for which data is available, and considered a longer period of time to account for any fluctuations that may have occurred year on year. Unsurprisingly, the countries with the highest number of patents granted are also nations which are incredibly ambitious and see themselves at the tech forefront globally across the next few decades.
25. Singapore
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 18,625
Singapore is considered to be a major financial and regional hub for Asia and Emerging Markets. In Singapore, intellectual property has continued to be recognized as a contributor to economic growth, and this mindset has also contributed to higher number of patents being granted in the country.
24. Denmark
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 20,112
Denmark has a strong focus on encouraging innovation and to make patent filing easier, received 2 million euros in funding to update its automated patent renewal platform.
23. Turkiye
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 20,632
Despite economic pressures, Turkiye has continued to improve in innovation, and has moved from less than 1,000 patents granted in 2011 to nearly 3,500 in 2021.
22. Australia
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 24,377
Australia has struggled in recent years in terms of patents, and is one of the few nations among the countries with the most patent grants where the number of patent grants in 2010 were higher than in 2021.
21. Finland
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 29,782
Finland’s patent activity has been remarkably stable in the past decade, even though patent grants actually fell in 2021 as compared to the previous year.
20. Belgium
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 32,003
Flanders is one of the areas in Belgium which has seen a major growth in patents, with one of the reasons being that many major multinationals have established their R&D departments in the country.
19. Poland
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 32,824
Poland is one of just four countries in our list where patent grants CAGR across 2010 to 2021 is in double-digits, with the country’s economic growth and innovation leading to many major companies creating hubs there.
18. Iran
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 35,128
Iran’s innovation has not ceased despite several years of major sanctions imposed by Western nations on the country mainly because of its nuclear program.
17. Spain
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 36,356
While European nations already are dominant in terms of patent grants, expect that to increase even more, including in Spain, after a new patent system was launched in the region in June 2023, which will make the granting of patents much easier.
16. Israel
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 38,725
No matter what else controversies Israel may be engaged in, its spending on research and development cannot be denied, especially in terms of number of patents per capita.
15. Austria
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 40,080
Austria is one of the countries with the highest number of patents granted, with a large contribution made from the mechanical engineering sector.
14. Sweden
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 47,208
Sweden’s innovation has major contributions from its telecom industry, which is why it’s not surprising to see that the nation is also among the countries with the fastest internet speeds.
13. India
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 61,784
India’s focus on technology has led to it becoming the first nation in the world to land on the Moon’s south pole. This continued innovation has also resulted in a strong increase in the number of patents granted, from over 2,200 in 2010 to 12,101 in 2021. After China, India has the highest CAGR (at 40.4%) of any country in our list.
12. Netherlands
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 65,276
Despite the country being relatively small in size, the Netherlands is easily among the countries with the most patent grants, mainly because it’s the base for many major medical technology companies.
11. Switzerland
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 93,180
While Switzerland saw its number of patent grants fall from 2020 to 2021, it has maintained a patent grant CAGR of 2.3% from 2010 to 2021.
10. Canada
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 94,032
The tech industry has taken a major interest in Canada in terms of AI operations, considering the boom in artificial intelligence in the country, though some are worried that perhaps the country is too open towards AI, especially for foreign companies which can push out local firms due to the latter being much less competitive.
9. United Kingdom
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 113,758
The United Kingdom has seen patent applications increase by 3.4% from 2021 to 2022, even though trademark applications have taken a major hit, falling by nearly 20%.
8. Italy
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 129,871
Overall, EU has seen patent grants continue to rise and Italy has played a part in this, and major revisions were carried out to the Italian Intellectual Property Code in a bid to streamline certain aspects of filing for IPs.
7. Russian Federation
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 244,185
While Russia is in our list right now, the fact is that even before its invasion of Ukraine, the number of patents filed in the country were dropping from 2017 onwards, and considering the major economic sanctions imposed on Russia in the aftermath of its war, it may drop out off this list very soon.
6. France
Total patents granted from 2010 to 2021: 246,311
France has been rising in the rankings of countries with the most patent grants in 2023 and Parisian courts are seeing an especially sharp rise in patent cases.
Click to continue reading and see the 5 countries with the most patent grants in 2023.
Suggested Articles:
- 20 Countries That Eat Chocolate the Most
- Long-Term Returns of Keith Meister’s Activist Targets
- 30 Countries That have the Most External Debt
Disclosure: None. 25 countries with the most patent grants in 2023 is originally published on Insider Monkey.
