2.3 Inventive activity in the food industry by Australian States and Territories
Addresses of inventors recorded in PCT applications enable geographical comparisons of inventive activity in food industries. The inventor address is indicative of the actual location of the innovative activity.
7 Out of the 704 PCT applications that
were attributed to Australia, 501 listed solely Australian inventors and 616 had at least one Australian inventor.
Figure 6: Geographical origin of Australian food inventions,
by
State and Territory
New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland are the largest food producers and patent filings generally correspond with this trend.8 These three states also had the highest shares of the 616 inventions with an Australian inventor (Figure 6). NSW and Victoria have the highest shares of patents at approximately 30 per cent each. In 2002, however, Queensland had the highest share of inventions with 38 per cent, owing to intensive patenting in dough mixing technology, and fruit and vegetable preservation innovations.
Figure 7 shows the origins of Australian food patenting by subregion, for PCT applications where all inventors are Australian.
The greater proportions of the filings coming from the capital cities reflect the greater population size and the centralisation of research centres. This aspect is represented by the high filings originating from inventors residing in Sydney and Melbourne.
