VPATAPP Alert_Users and Abusers of the Australian Innovation Patent System

http://blog.patentology.com.au/2017/03/users-and-abusers-of-australian.html

Updates from Australia

In an eight year period – one full innovation patent lifecycle – between 2007 and 2015, Australian residents were overwhelmingly the biggest users of the second-tier innovation patent system, filing over 10,000 innovation patent applications.  The next most frequent filers were the Chinese, with just 1500 applications, followed by US applicants with less than 1000.  Over 90% of the Australian applicants were individuals or small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs – businesses with fewer than 200 employees), i.e. the exact people the innovation patent system was intended to benefit when it was established by the Howard Government in 2001.  Over the same period, Australian residents filed just over 23,000 standard patent applications, a very distant second to US residents who were responsible for 115,000 applications.