Singapore patently ahead in Asian tech innovation

The number of high-tech breakthroughs by Singapore researchers helped the country beat 12 other regional markets in terms of patent quality, according to the second Asia-Pacific Intellectual Property Scorecard released yesterday at the Global IP Forum.

The Republic also took top spot in 2004 in the first study carried out by the National University of Singapore's Entrepreneurship Centre.

The research team analysed patents filed annually with the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) by 13 markets, including China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, said the centre's director, Professor Wong Poh Kam.

USPTO data was used as 'the US is the biggest market in the world'.

The team also examined data from the European patents office and found largely similar trends.

Quality was calculated based on how many times local patents were cited by other patents.

In particular, Singapore's patents in two technological classes, electronics and infocomm technology, were among the most highly cited in the region, said Prof Wong. This is at least in part due to the country's focus on these two fields.

Half of the 622 patents filed by Singapore inventors were in the electronics field, like semiconductor chips, and a quarter were in computers and communication products, like wireless antennas.

Only 1 per cent were design patents protecting the look of, say, a toy, shirt or the casing of a new media player, Prof Wong said.

In terms of quantity, Singapore's 622 patents put it in seventh place in the region. The 622 figure accounted for 0.32per cent of the 192,000 patents granted worldwide in 2009.

United States patents accounted for about half of the global total, and Japan, one-fifth.

Singapore's relatively small contribution was a function of its small population, said Prof Wong.

But, on a per capita basis, it did better, garnering nearly 134 patents per million people. This placed it in fourth place in the region - behind Taiwan (358.7), Japan (303.9) and South Korea (201.7).

The number of Singapore patents is also rising, albeit at a relatively slow clip of 8 per cent annually, making it ninth in Asia.

To boost R D, the Government said last September that it would set aside $1.6 billion to fund R D projects in the next five years.