India has performed poorly in international patent filings last year compared to its neighbour China, according to data released by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation.
Filing patent applications under WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty enables companies to secure patent protection in various countries.
It is a measure for a knowledge-based economy and a barometer of the spread of innovation-based companies in each country.
In the global race for knowledge-based industries, WIPO's data clearly suggest that India is far behind China.
India, for example, filed only 686 applications last year to secure patent protection in countries that are members of the PCT compared to 831 in 2006.
In the same period China's patent applications grew 38.1 per cent to reach an all-time high 5,456. China's impressive growth in its innovation-based companies enabled the Middle Kingdom to occupy seventh place in the world's top 15 countries.
"We expect India to grow rapidly in life-sciences research, but at this juncture its considerable research and development activity has not translated into patent filings,' said Francis Gurry, deputy-director general at WIPO overseeing the PCT work.
The stark differences between these two big economies are due to the underlying differences in their overall economic activity. While software and services dominate the Indian economy, new manufacturing activities are at the centre of the Chinese miracle, Gurry said.
Until now, the industrialised countries -- the US, Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Canada, Australia, Finland, and Israel -- dominated the global rankings in the patent filings.
Although many of them continue to occupy leading positions, the emergence of Korea and China as two leading innovation-driven economies brought a change in the prevailing rankings.