inovia's "U.S. 2011 Global Patent & IP Trends
Indicator" provides an in-depth look at the foreign filing
strategies of US patentees. We uncovered some interesting findings
this year, after surveying and interviewing nearly 150 companies
and universities who are working in the "new IP norm" as
many called it.
We found nearly 60 percent of all respondents are working on a
reduced IP budget going into 2011. Respondents credited workflow
changes (bringing steps in-house), vendor renegotiations (lower
and/or flat rates) and other creative IP budget management
techniques to reduce patent costs.
45 percent of respondents filed more than half of their patents
overseas last year, yet they became much more strategic about each
application and selective with the countries they chose to file
into and those they chose to drop. On average, they filed into 5.9
countries in 2010 as compared to 6.6 in 2009 (from our survey last
year).
