According to recent Al applications of the European Patent Office, Al market is entering a new growing stage. Although the number of AI patent applications accepted by the EPO has continued to grow each year, the growth rate remained at 24% in 2019, the growth speed has slowed down, it can be seen that the entire AI industry has started to mature.

In terms of AI patent applicants, due to South Korea’ positive focus on key innovations, Korean ranks the highest in the world in the number of AI patent applications per capita. However, in the cases accepted by the EPO in 2020, Chinese mainland applicants surpassed Japanese and became the third largest applicant country/region for AI-related patent applications, just following the United States and Europe. In terms of individual industries, the ranking of the manufacturing industry among the top 10 industries for patent applications increased by 3, showing that AI is more widely applied in the substantial economy.

In terms of technical fields, the number of patent applications for computer vision technology has accelerated in the past 5 years, and the number of disclosed cases has increased from 1,590 to 1,939.

On the contrary, applications for voice processing continued to decline, with the proportion of voice processing in all disclosed cases falling from 45% to 7% between 2000 and 2021. Therefore, with a period of heavy investment, voice processing technology has matured quite a bit. Moreover, computer vision patent applications have grown significantly, showing the shift of focus from voice recognition to understanding the implications of language.

In addition, the number of opposition requests related to AI technology accepted by the EPO has shown an increasing trend. While the overall opposition rate in all technical fields has decreased, the trend of AI patent opposition has shown a growth trend. It can be seen that AI patents have become an indispensable part of corporate business strategies.

From Tai E International Patent & Law Office

June 2022