World Intellectual Property Report 2019 – Local Hotspots, Global Networks

November 14, 2019

The 2019 edition of WIPO’s World Intellectual Property Report was presented in Geneva.

The main conclusion of the Report based on the analysis of millions of patent and scientific publication records across several decades, is that innovative activity is increasingly collaborative and international.

According to the WIPR 30 metropolitan hotspots alone accounted for 69% of patents and 48% of scientific activity during the 2015-2017 period located in China, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the U.S., and innovation has become more collaborative.

Today’s innovation landscape is highly globally interlinked. It is imperative that economies remain open in the pursuit of innovation.

WIPO Director General Francis Gurry at the presentation of the Report

The International Space Station – is a joint project of the national space agencies of Russia, Canada, Japan, the U.S. and the European Space Agency - has become a good example when governments can pool resources and fund large-scale scientific projects that require both financial support and knowledge available from different countries.

The analysis shows that in the second half of the 2010s publications by teams of scientists account for 88% of all scientific papers, while teams of inventors are behind 68% of patents. Collaboration has also become more international in nature. The share of scientific collaborations with two or more researchers located in different countries grew to around 25 percent in 2017. For patents, the share of international co-inventions increased to 11% until 2009, but has since slightly fallen, partly because of rapid growth in domestic collaborations in certain countries.

For the 2015 - 2017, about 70% of patents and 50% of scientific publications accounted Japan, the U.S. and Western European.

It should be noted that scientific activity is internationally more widespread than patenting in many middle-income countries. Generally, international collaboration is more frequent in scientific publishing than in patenting.

The rise of highly successful innovation hotspots has coincided with a growing inter-regional polarization of incomes, high-skilled employment and wages within countries. Regional support and development policies can play an important role in helping regions that have fallen behind.

The global innovation landscape of automotive and information technology proves that these sectors are undergoing profound changes and causing disruption, are challenging established players through the adoption of autonomous vehicles technology (AV). Ford, Toyota and Bosch – accounting for 357, 320 and 277 of AV patent families, respectively – are the top three autonomous vehicles patent applicants.

The Report also studies trends in agricultural biotechnology. China, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the U.S. account for more than 55% of all crop biotech articles and more than 80% of all patents.