Patents filed by India-domiciled companies in US continue to decline; here’s the key reason

The number of patents (technology and non-technology) filed by the India domiciled companies in the US has declined 12.3 per cent from 1,526 in 2017 to 1,338 in 2018-19, according to a Nasscom report. The fall was on the back of a decline in non-technology patents from 46.2 per cent to 40.6 per cent during the said period even as technology patents shot up from 53.8 per cent to 59.4 per cent. The number of non-technology patents had also declined in 2017 from 51.9 per cent in 2016 while technology patents had increased from 48.1 per cent in 2016. Importantly, the decrease in the total number of patents has been since 2016 when 1,836 patents were filed by such businesses in the US.

Analysing the patents filed since 2015 till 2019 so far, the report titled Emerging Technologies: Leading the technology IP creation bandwagon for India noted more than 40 per cent increase in the patent count to around 6,500 filed in the US by India domiciled companies from 2015-18 period. Technology patents from Indian startups also increased from around 200 patents in 2015-18 to more than 280 patents during 2015-19.