Korean Companies' Domestic and International Patent Applications Increase Despite COVID-19 Spread

Statistics and graphs related to domestic and international patent applications from January to April. Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office.

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] Despite the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), the number of patent applications by domestic companies showed a remarkable increase.

According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) on the 7th, the number of patents filed domestically from January to April was 65,499, up 2.9% compared to the same period last year, and international patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) totaled 5,899, an increase of 12.6% compared to the same period last year.

This figure is 2.3 percentage points higher than the average annual growth rate of domestic patent applications from 2015 to 2019 (0.6%) and 5.9 percentage points higher than the average annual growth rate of PCT international patent applications (6.7%), indicating that the number of patent applications actually increased despite the COVID-19 situation.

The recent increase in patent applications was driven by large corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), distinguishing them from foreign companies and domestic individuals. For example, large corporations increased their patent applications by 21.9% from January to April compared to the same period last year, and SMEs also increased by 6.5%, raising the overall number of patent applications.

Conversely, during the same period, foreign companies and domestic individuals saw decreases of 0.5% and 0.2%, respectively, in patent application comparisons.

Hyun Sung-hoon, Director of the Information Customer Support Bureau at KIPO, said, “It appears that domestic companies have proactively invested in the field of intellectual property despite difficult conditions,” adding, “KIPO will continue to spare no support to help domestic companies secure a leading position in the global market using patents and other intellectual property as weapons.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.