- Nearly eight out of every ten patent applications filed in India in more than a decade have been by foreigners residing abroad.
- A majority are by foreign firms, even as the number of Indian applications is slowly increasing.
- More than 5.1 lakh patent applications were filed in the country between 2005-06 and 2017-18
- according to the data compiled by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) as part of the latest Science & Technology Indicators (STI 2019-20) released recently.
- Among the patents filed by foreigners, most are individuals or companies from the
- US, Japan and Germany,
- accounting for more than 45% of the patents in the said period,
- While the UK, France, Switzerland, Russia, Netherlands and Italy also had hundreds of applications filed.
- With nearly 1.4 lakh applications, patents filed by those from the US alone accounted for more than 27% of total applications filed in the said period.
- The STI-2019-20 also provides data on top foreign companies filing patents in the five years between 2013-14 and 2017-18.
- Analysis shows that most of the top 19 companies were tech and telecom firms, including Chinese MNC Huawei Technologies.
- Qualcomm Incorporated—an American semiconductor and telecommunications equipment firm — tops the table with 6,960 applications, followed by Dutch multinational firm Koninklijke Philips, which had 3,670 applications.
