India Recorded 83,000 Patents In 2023: Report

A report on Friday revealed that India filed 83,000 patents in 2023, with an annual growth rate of 24.6 per cent, the highest in the last two decades. 

A patent is a form of intangible asset that grants its possessor the lawful authority to prevent others from producing, utilising, or commercialising an innovation for a specific duration, in return for disclosing the details of the said innovation.

A Nasscom report highlighted that the number of granted patents also witnessed a significant growth rising over two-fold between FY 2019 to 2023. In 2019, the proportion of the filing was 33.6 per cent in total.

The report predicted this trend is expected to grow significantly with over one lakh patents granted between 15th March 2023 to 14th March 2024.

The study found that the growth reflects an increased focus and heightened awareness of intellectual property rights in the country and identified educational institutes as a key driver of this growth.

The study said the rapid technological advancements and the emergence of interconnected global economies, have accelerated over 900 patents in India since 2008. This substantial increase was led by the home-grown deep tech startups coupled with the submission of 32, 000 Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications by other countries, which stood as a testament to this increasing focus.

Amongst the top application areas, healthcare patents primarily around medical imaging, diagnosing, report generation and testing, saw the maximum applications, followed by automation, software development and retail or ecommerce. 

Meanwhile, artificial Intelligence also experienced maximum patent filings in areas of image processing, NLP and Predictive modelling, while Gen AI, medical data processing and cognitive computing evolved as the key emerging areas.