Indonesian R&D and patents

Thomson Reuters published research on R&D and patents in G20 countries recently. The data available from Indonesian sources was clearly highly inaccurate (comprising only about 5% of the patents filed), but some interesting facts could be gleaned.

Firstly Indonesia has the smallest share of the top global patented technologies of any G20 country. Much of its domestic patenting falls in the field of natural products, with some chemicals (fertilisers, oils, fats and waxes) and petroleum (transportation, storage and products other than fuels and lubricants).  There is a little activity in foodstuffs and agriculture.  A heavy bias to natural product patents is indicative of low levels of national R&D.

Nine of the top ten largest Indonesian patent filing organisations are academic or government bodies. This contrasts with other G20 countries, whose domestic patentees are dominated by industrial titans, so confirms a serious lack of private industry R&D in Indonesia.

The top 3 Indonesian patentees apparently in 2012 were:

Brawijaya University, Malang -  30 patents
Bogor Agricultural Institute - 26 patents
The Indonesian national science institute, LIPI's Innovation centre - 25 patents

IP Komodo stresses that the data set was incomplete for the research but this is consistent with other information, see for example previous reports here.