Status Report published by the JPO April 4, 2016

The Japan Patent Office (“JPO”) recently published its Status Report for 2016, which includes statistics regarding Japanese patent applications for the previous years. Some interesting data are shown below for your reference.

The report can be obtained from the following URL:
https://www.jpo.go.jp/shiryou/toukei/pdf/status2016/all.pdf

1. The number of Japanese patent applications (2006-2015) filed by domestic and foreign applicants remains stable.

2. The number of PCT international patent applications filed with the JPO as the receiving office has been generally increasing.

3. The numbers of Japanese patent applications in 2015 by the applicant’s country of origin are shown below. Excluding Japan, the top filer is US with 26,501 applications, followed by Germany with 6,430, Korea with 5,222, France with 3,369 and China with 2,840. In 2016, foreign applicants filed 18.8% of all the patent applications filed with the JPO.

4. The number of Japanese patent applications filed by universities including TLO (technology licensing organizations) has remained almost unchanged.

5. The total number of patent applications filed in the world, from 2005 to 2014, is shown below. Both the resident and non-resident applications are growing.

6. The total number of PCT international patent applications filed in the world has been steadily growing since 2009.

7. The JPO has reduced First Action pendency (the period between Request for Examination and first official action for Japanese patent applications) to less than 11 months.