Downturn spikes patent filings

Here's another casualty of the economic downturn. International patent filings under the World Intellectual Property Organization's Patent Cooperation Treaty fell by 4.5 per cent in 2009, and, not surprisingly, sharper than average declines were experienced by industrialised countries like the US, the UK and Germany. India, too, was among those that slipped among the developing countries.

However, a clutch of East Asian countries, led by China, Japan and South Korea, bucked the trend. Patent filings in China shot up by 30 per cent, with some 7,946 international applications straddling different categories like electrical machinery, digital communication, computer technology and pharmaceuticals.