By Donald Zuhn —

In March, the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced that International
patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) increased by
6.6% in 2012.  WIPO noted that of the
194,000 PCT applications filed last year, Japan and U.S. accounted for nearly
half (48.8%) of those applications.  Five
countries had double-digit growth in PCT filings in 2012:  the Netherlands (+14.0%), China (+13.6%),
Republic of Korea (+13.4%), Finland (+13.2%), and Japan (+12.3%).  PCT filings in several countries dropped in
2012, including Turkey (-16.3%), Mexico (-15.6%), India (-9.2%), Canada
(-6.7%), South Africa (-5.3%), the Russian Federation (-4%), Spain (-2.4%), and
Australia (-1.8%).

With regard to technical
field, electronic machinery (7.5% of published applications), digital
communications (7.1%), computer technology (7%), medical technology (6.4%), and
pharmaceuticals (4.4%) saw the largest shares of published applications.  Biotechnology applications had a 3.0% share
of published applications in 2012.  While
several technical fields saw double-digit growth in share of published
applications between 2011 and 2012, including IT methods for management (+22.8%),
micro-structural and nano-technology (+21.2%), computer technology (+18.2%),
transport (+17.5%), electrical machinery (+17.1%), optics (12.3%), measurement
(10.8%), and machine tools (10.6%), biotechnology and pharmaceutical
application share rose by only 1.0% and 1.1%, respectively.

WIPO released the following
infographic on PCT filings for 2012.