Information and Comments on Intellectual Property Matters

RUSSIAN INVENTORS WORK FOR THE WORLD BUSINESS
The last several years were marked by growing patent activity of Russian scientists and engineers for the Western corporations. This is reflected in patents obtained by Russian inventors in the USA. We conducted patent searches in USPTO database to investigate the issue. Our investigations show that about 50% of such patents belong not to Russian entities, but to the firms of USA, Japan, Korea, and European countries (See table). 
				Table 
Breakdown of patents obtained by Russian inventors
in 1992-1997 by assignee countries 


Patentee country     Number
                     of patents
_____________________________________

USA                      250
GERMANY                   35
JAPAN                     23
KOREA                     25
FRANCE                    24
CANADA                     9
NETHERLANDS                6
UNITED KINGDOM             7
SWITZERLAND                4
SWEDEN                     3 
AUSTRIA                    4

All countries,
identified above         390
___________________________________

Number of patents, 
registered by Russian
assignees                216

Patents of Russian
inventors obtained in
the USA in 1992-1997,
TOTAL                    764

Share of patents,
owned by foreign
firms, %                  50
______________________________________
Taken into account in the table were only the patents in which the inventor country was identified as Russia (RU). However, many patents issued in the analysed period identify the inventor country as Soviet Union (SU) and they were not counted. Besides, some patents obtained by Russia in the USA may belong to the countries other than those identified in the table. So there might be even greater number of patents of Russian inventors owned by foreign entities. We may presume that this is a world record and Russia is sure to rank first among all the countries by this indicator - share of US patents of national inventors assigned to foreign companies. This is a good indicator of the level of education and skills of Russian specialists on the one hand and of the potential value of using it in the international cooperation.

We think it our duty to shape this cooperation into normall legal framework, first of all to ensure that requrements of art.35 of the Russian Patent Law are fulfilled.

See also

Foreign patent filing for inventions made in Russia

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