Patent applications in Korea have increased 5% annually for the past 10 years

As a result of analysis using natural language search method, the total number of patent applications in Korea for the past 10 years (2006-2015) has been found to be 2,638, around 5% annual average increase, according to Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO).

Search words used in the sentence-based natural language search were ‘artificial intelligence,’ ‘machine learning,’ ‘deep learning’ and ‘decision making.’
 

▲Patent application trend by application year

The patent applications have shown steadily increasing trend up until 2013, with 212, 288, 295 and 371 applications in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 respectively. After then it showed slight decline, with 367 and 301 applications in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

R&D focused on IT including computer and communications
AI is a representative fusion technology applicable to almost all industries. Looking at the status of patent applications by application industry, R&D is mainly focused on IT fields such as computer (64.1%) and communication (9.9%). Precision equipments, medical equipments and electricity follow them with the figures of 6.1%, 4.6% and 4.1% respectively. In particular, AI technology is actively being used in digital computing, executive management, wired and wireless communications, image data processing, etc.

 
▲Patent application status by application industry

On the contrary, patent application rates were rather insignificant for non-IT fields such as chemistry, food, clothing and construction with the same figure of 0.1% for all of them.

In terms of AI-related patent applications, Samsung Electronics ranked top with 163 applications. Following it were ETRI, Qualcomm, Microsoft and KAIST with the patent application number of 129, 86, 74 and 58 respectively. 

In terms of AI-related patent application entity, enterprises, universities, foreigners, individuals and research institutes recorded 31%, 26%, 25%, 9% and 9% respectively.

 
   ▲National AI patent application trends of Korea, USA and Japan

Meanwhile, regarding the number of AI-related patents for the past 10 years, it has been shown that USA recorded 24,054 and Japan 4,208, which are 9.1 times and 1.6 times respectively compared to Korea’s.

Pointing out that “it’s true that local number of patent applications is still modest as AI technology has not been popular in Korea,” Jae-Hyun Park, KIPO’s chief of examination, said that “utilization potential of AI technology is virtually limitless. We need to pay more positive attention to the field so as to acquire more patents through aggressive R&D from various industry fields.”