On March 29, 2007, JPO announced the results of the number of registered and filed patent applications in Japan for 2006. The number of patents that were registered with the JPO grew by 15% from 2005 for a total of 141,399 patents. The number of filed applications on the other hand dropped by 4.3% with a total of 408,674.
According the JPO, companies are reducing application costs by filing only the most promising applications. The increase in the number of applications granted they way is a direct result of the corporations’ improvement in their IP strategy. JPO has been urging larger corporations in particularly to limit the number of filings for many years now. If this analysis is true, perhaps their efforts have finally paid off.
(Posted on April 23, 2007)
