On Friday, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) released its “WIPO Patent Report: Statistics on Worldwide Patent Activity (2007 Edition)” discussing where in the world patent applications are being filed and who is filing them. This Report includes sections entitled “Patent Filings by Residents and by Non-Residents”, “Indicators of Patent Intensity”, “Fields of Technology”, “The International Route: the Patent Cooperation Treaty”, “Patent Filing in the European Region”, “Patent Filing in the North East Asian Region”, “Processing of Patent Applications”, “Patents Granted”, “Patents In Force”, and “Statistical Tables”. One particular statistic that I found interesting (among several) is the “Resident Filings per Million Population” 2005 statistic, noting that Japan and the Republic of Korea lead with 2,875.68 and 2,530.08, respectively, with the United States third with 701.08. Regarding total resident patent filings in 2005, Japan led the way with 359,382, a figure larger than second (United States) and third (Republic of Korea) combined. Links to the HTML and PDF versions of the report, as well as a summary of the North East Asia statistics, are provided below.

WIPO 2007 Patent Report (HTML): LINK
WIPO 2007 Patent Report (PDF): LINK
WIPO Highlights of North East Asia: LINK