The JPO reports on AI patent filings in the third AI Boom. The number of patent filings in Japan for AI-related inventions has demonstrated an upward trend since 2014 in the wake of the third AI boom. In 2020, it went up by around 14% from the previous year.
In its latest report, not surprisingly, the JPO reports that a survey of WIPO’s PATENTSCOPE “elucidates that patent applications associated with AI technologies are on the increase in major economies, although the profiles are not altogether identical.”
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Information sources for this article can be found here:
The JPO’s central news bulletin “Quick Reads”
The JPO’s Recent trends in the AI home page with links to various reports,
The full PDF of the report dated Oct 2020 is in English and Japanese.
This is the WIPO PATENTSCOPE database, a handy tool for searching WIPO Patents
2020 AI Patent Data Report Summary
The JPO Updates its report concerning AI-related patent applications on a yearly basis and its latest version, which is based on statistics up until the year 2020, is now available on the JPO website.
In this report, the JPO is updating its data from the 2019 report. Unfortunately, there is a two-year data lag in these reports, however the important trends are clearly discernible and provide useful insights to those following patent registration in the field of AI.
The JPO reports that “In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) -related technology has shown remarkable development centering on deep learning. Accordingly, AI-related patent applications are increasing across technological fields. As growth of AI-related technology developments and patent applications is expected to continue in the future, the JPO researched the current status of AI-related applications in Japan and overseas, and reported the result in July 2019.”
Regarding the figures below, the JPO notes that “the number of domestic applications for AI-related inventions has been increasing since 2014 due to the impact of the third AI boom (Figure 1). In terms of Deep Learning, the biggest factor in the recent increase in applications for AI-related inventions, the growth in the numbers of CNN, RNN, LSTM and Deep Reinforcement Learning has been slowing down since 2018, but the number of Transformer has been on the rise since 2017(Figure 2). As for the AI-applied area, the number of applications in the image processing field is particularly high (Figure 3). In addition to image processing, the number of technical fields that can be grouped under “Others” is also on the rise, suggesting that the application of AI technology is expanding.
Figure 1
Figure 2: The number of applications of AI-related inventions referring to the specific deep learning method
Figure 3: Composition of main classification of AI-related invention (showing the number in 2020 etc)
Prior annual JPO AI reports
Various other related JPO and WIPO resources
- WIPO Technology Trends – Artificial Intelligence (External link)
- Patent Examination Case Examples pertinent to AI-related technologies
- Recent Trends in Business-related Inventions
- Japanese Page
This article is a pointer to AI Patent related materials being published by the JPO and WIPO. While the materials are essential statistics, they may provide valuable background or context for IP Practitioners. The JPO reports on AI patent filings in the third AI Boom and beyond in support thereof.
