Canada's patent filings stall despite population boom

Canada's population has grown by over 13 million since 1990, yet patent filings have remained stagnant.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office's IP Canada Report 2025 showed that patent filings declined by one per cent in 2024, marking the third consecutive year. While a single percentage point may seem inconsequential, over previous decades, the line of patent applications has remained roughly the same on the X-axis.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), in 1990, Canadians filed around100 patents per one million people. In 2024, that number was 104, securing this country's 25th-place ranking globally.

While patents in the United States have seen a decline since the COVID-19 pandemic years, the country has seen a slight rebound in patents, with 795 filed per million inhabitants, a solid fifth place on the global rank.

The top filer, the Republic of Korea, saw 3,783 filings per million people, driven by high-intensity R&D investment and a strong corporate focus on cutting-edge technologies like AI, quantum computing, and electronics.

Kaylie Tiessen, Chief Economist at the Canadian Shield Institute, analysed WIPO patent filing data from various countries, including Canada, the United States and China. 

"One thing very interesting that we found is that no matter what sector, even the ones that are really high for Canada, [it] lags behind many of the countries that I've listed. Whether you're looking at something like computer technology, where Canada has a relatively high rate of patents per million population compared to other types of industries, we still lag China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the UK," she said.

But why could this be? Canada does have the talent; we are a leader in "Silicon Valley North" and home to top research institutions such as the University of Waterloo and three national AI institutes (Vector, Amii, and Mila). In 2024, the top patent filers included major research institutions such as the University of British Columbia (96 filed) and the University of Toronto (87 filed), as well as automotive innovators such as the Aurora, Ont.-based parts manufacturer Magna International (80 filed).

Although Tiessen said that the gap between the research Canada conducts and the investments made within the country's borders is huge compared to the goods and services exported to other places.

Randall Craig, a Toronto-based business strategy expert, works with many Canadian clients who are holding on to innovative ideas. He said this might be due to macroeconomic factors stemming from the brain drain spreading from coast to coast.

"Canada has a different investment and risk climate than there is in the United States. It's not so easy to be in Canada. In a certain sense, corporate taxation rates are higher. There's more regulatory burden," said Craig. "The fact that we're more and more of a branch plant economy means that some of these global companies, you know, they focus their filings on the United States."

He added that the University of Waterloo, for example, is a top educational institution, but it's also known as a recruiting ground for top tech firms in California's Silicon Valley.

Additionally, many of the Canadian patents filed are bound for foreign patent offices. WIPO reported that 62.5 per cent of patents filed by Canadians were bound for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. 10.6 per cent towards the European Patent Office.

In 2024, of the 35,374 patents filed, only 12.2 per cent were filed by Canadian residents. The lion's share came from residents of the U.S. (50.3 per cent of non-resident applications) and Germany (six per cent).

The government seems to be aware of reforms to the system. Last month, the federal government launched a consultation regarding the increasing legal certainty in IP services and administration. This followed Budget 2025's commitment to renew funding for key IP programs like Elevate IP and the Innovation Asset Collective.

The current budget provides an additional $22.5 million over three years (starting in 2026-27) to renew support for the IAC program.

"Canada needs to start making some better choices like intentionally linking research funding to domestic IP ownership, supporting firms to build an IP strategy, like through elevating IP scaling," Tiessen said.

Tiessen added that the IAC's Patent Collective is one way an industry has worked to strengthen IP advocacy. The collective helps Canadian companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises in the cleantech space, understand, protect, and use their intellectual property to grow and compete globally.

"[For my clients], I think everyone's acutely aware of that 'we've got something we've invented, let's get it patented,'" said Craig. "I don't think it's for lack of a desire. I think it's really more a focus of the macroeconomic factors that make it so we have less people who are filing."