India’s rising patent application numbers are a mirage

How we analyse statistics on Indian patents often fails to offer the correct perspective, which should include research quality, commercial potential, global competitiveness and other important parameters, not all of which are reflected in patent data.

- MIHIR MAHAJAN & ARINDAM GOSWAMI

Data from the Indian patent office shows that patent filings have risen in India from about 40,000 in 2013 to about 60,000 in 2023, driven mainly by Indian entities upping their contribution from 20% of the total to 60%. The Indian patent office has improved its throughput, with the average time taken to grant an approval falling from eight years in 2013 to less than one by 2023. The overall growth in patent filings was led chiefly by educational institutions, which went from 20% of all filings in 2013 to about 42% in 2023. Filings by individual inventors also show a large increase, while the share of companies dropped from 40% to under 20%.

To get a patent, an invention needs to meet the criteria of possessing novelty, having an inventive step (to exclude straightforward modifications of existing technology) and being of industrial use (having a practical application). These criteria would only be met by serious researchers solving commercially-relevant problems that require substantial spending on research and development (R&D), including capital equipment, salaries and benefits for those involved.