The most innovative nations have export oriented IP strategies, Australian patent analyst finds

MELBOURNE, Australia - May 6, 2013 - PRLog -- A global comparison of patent filing ‘productivity’ (patent filings corrected for the size of the economy and population) for a range of selected countries has found that South Korea, Japan and Switzerland are performing best on this measure of innovation. These three countries were followed by the Northern European countries of Finland, Sweden, Germany and Denmark. Israel was in 8th position, ahead of the Netherlands, China and the US which sat in 11th position.

This was the surprising result from an analysis of patent filing data performed by Australian based patent analytics startup Ambercite. This analysis is based on 2011 data sourced from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) statistical database, with 2011 economic and population data from the World Bank.

The second surprising fact was the degree of IP export orientation, as determined by the relative number of local and global filings. Switzerland had the highest export orientation, and China the lowest focus on the export of IP. Many of the most innovative countries (according to patent filings) had a predominant export orientation, with South Korea and China and the only real exceptions to this.

One of the challenges facing companies from all countries when filing new patents, particularly in foreign countries, is dealing with the wealth of existing patents. There are over 80 million published patents, and searching these patents to find the patents that are relevant to a specific technology can be time consuming and relevant patents can still be missed. These challenges led Austrian born big data analyst Doris Spielthenner to found Ambercite in 2009, in conjunction with Australian patent attorney firm Griffith Hack. Doris conceived network patent analysis when consulting on projects to find the most influential people, for example, practitioners in the medical field. Doris discovered that networks could also be used to analyse the quality of patents and patent portfolios, and has since consulted to some of the world’s leading companies in this area.

More recently, Ambercite launched a beta trial of a network based patent searching website, amberscope.com. Amberscope has the potential to improve the quality of granted patents, by providing data that can make it more difficult for undeserving patents to be granted.

Ambercite CEO Doris Spielthenner has stated “We congratulate the countries who have come out top in this survey, and look forward to assisting more companies all around the world in improving their international competitiveness in the fast growing world of intellectual property”.