Patent growth in Indonesia

WIPO's 2015 data report on World Patent Indicators shows an interesting trend for Indonesia.

Patent filings in the country jumped by over 14% in 2015 over the previous year, the second largest % rise worldwide after China. This is well over its 7.8% long term growth trend. 9,153 patent applications were made in total. 1,058 of them (nearly 12%) were by Indonesian residents. However two thirds of the growth came from foreign applications. Principally this is from Japan which filed over a quarter of all applications in Indonesia.

By comparison total patent filings in other SE Asian markets were as follows:

Malaysia 7,727
Vietnam 5,033
Philippines 3,734
Thailand 7,930

This will be good for government revenue and surely reflects increasing foreign investment.

Grant rates however remain low at 1911 in 2015, suggesting an increasing backlog. The grant to application ratio of Indonesia is lower than other countries in the region - Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia are showing far higher grant levels. This needs to be addressed to avoid longer delays. The new patent law might help.  

But whilst domestic Indonesian applications rose by 4%, only 6 PCTs were filed by Indonesians, demonstrating how little international technology focus the country has. Compared with 17 PCTs from Philippines, 97 from Thailand and 15 from Vietnam. Indeed, one worries that some of the local inventor applications might not withstand foreign examination.