Collecting data and writing Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report 2022

The definition of ‘green innovation’ varies widely. Most broadly, ‘green innovation’ can be conceived as any technology aimed at limiting negative environmental impact created by human activity. Such green innovation could include technologies that help eliminate pollution, use resources more sustainably, handle waste more responsibly, recycle used materials effectively, or identify alternatives to fossil fuels.

There are many areas that we could have explored in this second edition of our annual report. As we decided for our first edition, we have again focused on what we judged to be some of the most pressing and widely accepted issues facing us today: plastics, food production, and energy. These areas were chosen for their current relative prominence in the global green innovation conversation, as referenced in the OECD’s and United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Green Innovation Database, a ‘global innovation catalogue that connects needs for solving environmental or climate change problems with sustainable solutions’.

Our patent filing insights are based on patent filing analytics produced using PatBase, a patent data and analytics platform, in combination with industry assessments and our experience as patent attorneys. The search criteria were developed using combinations of keywords and classifications. Varying filters were applied to the datasets during analysis, to pull out points of interest in combination with the application of patent attorney judgement and the assessment of individual patent filings.

Due to an 18-month lag between the filing and the publication of a patent application, a full dataset for 2021 was not available at the time of producing this year’s report. We took the decision to include full-year data only in this report. As such, this report includes data up until 31 December 2020.

The normal rationale for investing in a new patent application is an underlying business case based on the anticipated commercial value of the technological innovation. This rationale should mean that there is a strong correlation between patent filing trends and meaningful technical progress. However, at times the correlation can be weakened by other factors that can drive the filing of patent applications that are not directed toward innovations supported by a conventional business case.

For example, governments may implement policies that reward patent filing in the home country for reasons other than or additional to innovation, such as tax benefits for the applicant, or even lump sum cash payments. Cultural pressures can also influence patent filing trends for reasons other than the normal commercially driven reasons, such as for academic or institutional reputation.

It is not feasible to remove all of these additional factors from the datasets. For this reason, the correlation between patent filing trends and meaningful innovation progress should be taken as a general guide only.

Nevertheless, in recent years one driver has been affecting the filing data to such an extent that we have had to take it into account. China’s policy over the previous decade, of offering lump sum payment incentives for the filing and granting of Chinese patents, has arguably led to unprecedented high levels of patent filing activity in China. In many sectors, the number of year-on-year patent filings originating in China can be ten times the number originating in the rest of the world combined. An unusually high proportion of these filings do not extend beyond China, and more anecdotally, the applications have been found to have unusually narrow claims. Although it is difficult to assess, it appears likely that many China-originating filings may have been driven by these state-offered cash incentives, rather than the normal commercial drivers outlined above. For these reasons, unless indicated otherwise, we have removed China-only patent filings from the datasets. However, where a China-originating patent application includes at least one family member outside of China, the application was included in the dataset. The proportion of China-originating filings that were retained in the report on this basis was extremely small.

On 27 January 2021, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) announced that the financial assistance for filing patent applications would cease as of June 2021. It was also announced that the financial support for granted patents would be phased out over five years, coming to an end in 2025. It will be interesting to see the effect of this change in policy.