Foreign applications at the Japan Patent Office – An empirical analysis of selected growth factors

This article aims to evaluate some of the possible factors which could have had a significant role in the increase in the yearly number of foreign patent applications at the Japan Patent Office. The analysed period ranges from 1991 to 2005. In the years considered, foreign applications increased constantly while the number of domestic filings remained almost the same or even decreased. The increase is more striking when compared to analogous figures of the US Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office, where the corresponding ratio did not change too much in the same period. Building on previous literature, this paper analyses the impact of some macroeconomic and structural characteristics of the extending countries, on one side, and, on the other side, some features specific to the receiving country and its Patent Office (here Japan and the JPO). This work tries to capture the relevance of such drivers in the increased amount of foreign patent applications at the JPO.

► The propensity of foreign patent applicants to patent in Japan was found to be related to the innovativeness of each origin country of the applicants (extending country).
► The closeness in the strength of the patent system in Japan to that of the extending country seems to facilitate the patent extension procedure; the harmonisation of national patent systems plays a facilitating role in the flow of patents from one country to another.
► The involvement (Foreign Direct Investment and trade volumes) of each extending country in Japan does have a clear correlation with the number of filings at the JPO.
► The supposed influence of China in the patenting behaviour of foreign companies in Japan does not appear relevant from the recorded patent documents subject of the analyses in this study.