PCT Yearly Review - WIPO

Section A
use of the pct system
A.5
Fields of Technology of
PCT Applications
PCT applications span a wide range of technologies –
some emerging, some maturing and others declining.
The tendency to file patent applications differs across
technologies, as some technologies depend more heavily
on the patent system than others. This subsection
shows the distribution of PCT applications across fields of
technology by year and for the top 10 countries of origin.
For reasons of confidentiality, statistics are based on
publication rather than filing date. Statistics based on
publication date have a delay of approximately six months
compared to those based on international filing date.
The breakdown of published PCT applications by field of
technology is based on a concordance table that relates
the International Patent Classification (IPC) symbols to 35
fields of technology. 19
The distribution of applications among the different fields
ranged from 0.2% (micro-structural and nano-technology,
434 applications) to 7.5% (electrical machinery, apparatus
and energy, 13,293 applications) in 2012.
Almost all fields (33 out of 35) reported growth in published
applications, of which 8 showed double-digit
growths. The three fields with the highest growth rates
were: IT methods for management (+22.8%), microstructural
and nano-technology (21.2%) and transport
(+17.5%). In contrast, the two fields with declining numbers
were analysis of biological materials (-3.9 %) and
handling (-1.6%).
A.5.1 PCT applications by field of technology
Table A.5.1 shows the number of PCT applications by
field of technology for applications published from 2008
to 2012.
In 2012, electronic machinery, with 13,293 published
applications, became the field of technology in which
the largest number of PCT applications were published,
followed by digital communications (12,616 applications)
and computer technology (12,391). This was the first
year in which the top three fields belonged to the same
sector, namely electrical engineering. Medical technology
(11,348), which grew at a slower pace, moved to
fourth position.
19 The concordance table is available at
www.wipo.int/ipstats/en/statistics/patents/.
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