ANALYSIS OF MULTI-AUTHORITY FILED PATENT FAMILIES

3.10 ANALYSIS OF MULTI-AUTHORITY FILED PATENT FAMILIES

These records are now analyzed in further detail in terms of geographic source and the timeline of activity.

Figure 23 - Office of First Filing for Patent Families with Two or More Subsequent Filings per Family

Figure 23 highlights two countries which are the primary source of multiple jurisdiction inventions, namely the United States and Japan.

China, the third largest overall source of visual and hearing device patenting activity has 2691 records filed in multiple authorities, a figure comparable to other countries, such as Germany and Russia. It should be noted however that of the total number of Chinese patents in the dataset (5658 inventions), less than half (47.5%) have been filed in multiple jurisdictions. This is far lower than the United States (79.5%) and Japan (65%) which appear higher on the multi-authority patent filing table.

Figure 24 shows how the patent activity filed in multiple authorities is distributed over time. The charts show both absolute numbers of patent families per year as well as a normalized scale version to allow activity trends to be discerned. The normalization is performed by assessing the activity filed in any single year as a proportion of the total activity across all years.

The activity trend is showing that patent volumes are increasing up until 2007 where a drop in both complete and multi authority inventions occur. Interestingly, complete inventions plateau, whereas multi authority inventions continue to decelerate and fall. This can be explained by emerging countries such as China increasing their patent activity overall; however given the strong local nature of this patent activity (e.g. China) which is predominantly recent in nature, less multi authority inventions are being filed, causing this fall.

The second item of interest is the acceleration in activity in PCT filings in the normalized scale. This activity has been sporadic over the last 20 years however there was an exceptional jump around 2008. This indicates that less multi authority filings are occurring recently, however entities are increasingly filing via the PCT route. This could potentially lead to an increased number of multi authority inventions in the future. This PCT filing upward trend may be strategic on the part of entities in this technology field in order to reduce the initial costs associated with the patent process. This also provides an entity more time to decide and execute the best worldwide patent filing strategy for their innovation.

Figure 24 - Number of Patent Families per Year for Multi-Authority Patent Families Versus the Complete Assistive Devices And Technologies For Visually And Hearing Impaired Persons Collection (left); Same Timeline but With Normalized Y-Axis For Comparison of Activity Rates (right)