The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) program of the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reports that there were a record 134073 PCT patent applications received in 2005, an increase of 9.4% compared to the previous year.

Philips N.V. was the most productive organization, with 2492 PCT applications, followed by Matsushita, Siemens, Nokia, Bosch and Intel in 6th spot.

Ranked by country, the U.S. came out on top with 45111 patent applications, ahead of Japan, Germany, France, the U.K. and Korea in sixth place.

The big news was the surge of applications from China (up 43.7% compared to the previous year), Korea and Japan.

It’s interesting to compare WIPO’s list to that just published by the USPTO. While the act of comparing international patents applied-for to U.S. patents issued is problematic, it would appear that many companies, such as IBM and Canon are much less active internationally. From the published numbers, one might infer that IBM considers a U.S. patent to be about 10 times more valuable than an international one.

Record Year for International Patent Filings - WIPO Press Release, 03-02-2006

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