In recent years, the title of leading filer of Australian patent applications has been hotly (though probably inadvertently) contested between Huawei Technologies Ltd (China), Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Ltd (China), and LG Electronics (South Korea). In 2022, LG was a clear winner, with 283 new standard patent applications. Huawei filed 181 applications, while OPPO disappeared entirely from the leader board, with just 16 applications filed in 2022 – a long way short of the 435 applications it filed at its peak in 2020.
The big surprise of the past year, however, is the appearance of IBM in second place, with 189 applications. The company affectionately known as ‘Big Blue’ was the leading US patent recipient for a remarkable 29 consecutive years. At its peak, it filed more than 10,000 applications in a single year, and received 8,682 US patents in 2021. However, throughout all of this time IBM has not been a major patent applicant in Australia, filing no more than 35 applications (in 1995) during any year between 1991 and 2020.
Other major filers of recent years to have dropped out of the top 30 include cloud computing and virtualization technology provider Citrix Systems, Inc (sixth placed in 2021 with 147 applications, down to just 19 filings in 2022) and semiconductor and wireless technology company Qualcomm Inc (which peaked at 326 applications in 2018, but filed just 28 times in 2022).
Once again, the leading Australian-based applicant was Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd with 69 applications, followed by the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with 51 applications. As in 2021, the top New Zealand applicant was Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Ltd which, with 111 applications, easily out-filed the leading Australians.