IoT Patent Applications Being Expanded to More Industries
- a Growth Engine for Contactless Business after Covid-19 -
It can be seen that although IoT technologies were initially filed with a focus on ICT areas such as devices and networks, etc., recently they are being applied to technologies for providing a variety of services and are being broadly expanded to other industries.
IoT is typically classified by device, platform, service, etc. In particular, ‘IoT service’ means IoT application technologies for creating new added value by collecting data, analyzing status and providing this to a user.
According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), patents related to IoT services involved less than 100 cases annually until 2012 but then rapidly grew to 1,179 cases in 2017, an increase of over 11 times.
<Number of Patent Applications Related to IoT Services per Year>
* As of May 4, 2020; data extracted from the Patent & Utility Model Search System by combining main patent classifications related to IoT services and related keywords such as similar words ‘IoT’ and ‘M2M’ was analyzed.
Classifying applicants by type, 33% (1,857 cases) were small and medium-sized businesses, 24% (1,351 cases) were large companies, 18% (1,006 cases) were individuals, 15% (810 cases) were universities and institutes, and 8% (468 cases) were foreign corporations, and it can be seen that small and medium-sized businesses, individuals, universities and institutes occupied a relatively high proportion of applicants.
<Status of Applicants of Patents Related to IoT Services>
Classifying by main technology, it is understood that IoT is being applied to a variety of fields, including remote supervisory control; the farming, fishing and mining industries; health care; electricity/gas/water; public services; traffic/vehicles; online content provision; communications networks; and computing devices, among others.
<Main Fields for Patents Related to IoT Services>
The Chief of KIPO’s IoT Examination Department stated, “It is expected that added value will be increased in existing industries by applying IoT technologies to a wide variety of industries so as to create quality jobs and strengthen the global competitiveness of national corporations” and added, “Based on our excellent national ICT infrastructure, the recent rapid increase in patent applications related to IoT services can help lead the growth of contactless industries with the expanded smartification of industries, remote medical services, work at home services, etc. after Covid-19.”
[Source: KIPO]