The Korean Intellectual Property Office on Dec. 1 said the country's number of applications for standard essential patents related to the internet of things based on the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, a general term for standards organizations that develop protocols for mobile telecommunications, jumped more than fivefold from 2012-21. (LG Electronics)

By Gil Kyuyoung

The country's number of applications for standard essential patents related to the internet of things (IoT) based on the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, aka 3GPP, a general term for several standards organizations that develop protocols for mobile telecommunications, has jumped over fivefold over a 10-year period.

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) on Dec. 1 said the number of such filings with IP5, referring to the world's five largest patent offices, jumped from just 2,401 in 2012 to 12,110 in 2021.

By country, China accounted for the largest share of applications filed (33.1%), followed by the U.S. (25.9%), Korea (19.1%) and Japan (9.5%), but Korea had the highest growth of such filings with 25%.

By company, Qualcomm was No. 1 with 21.3% of such applications, followed by Samsung Electronics (16.3%), Huawei (15.6%) and LG Electronics (13.7%). Samsung and LG combined accounted for 30% of the filings, highlighting Korea's status as a global telecommunications power.

By technology type, Narrowband IoT, a low-power, wide-area communications technology, led with 63.9%, followed by Sidelink, which enables direct communication between machines without a base station, with 21.3%.

"Standard essential patents based on mobile communications will be a crucial competitive edge in the IoT industry," KIPO said. "We will help each company raise its competitiveness by figuring out global trends."

gilkyuyoung@korea.kr