Machine Learning Innovation

Machine learning technology is an area of outstanding growth and investment worldwide. This report analyses patents filed since 2012 to reveal the key trends, innovators, and national and commercial players.

Leaders in machine learning revealed

Since 2012, patenting of AI and machine learning-related technologies has increased significantly, with a four-fold global increase in patent filings over five years from 2012−16. Applicants are commonly large corporations or universities.

China is both the most significant patent filing destination and the largest source of patent family filings in machine learning. The United States, South Korea and Japan are the other major players, with Australia ranking tenth in the world as a patent filing destination.

In real-world applications of machine learning, the telecommunications sector had the most patent filings (17 per cent of patents filed), likely reflecting this sector's growth and net worth in the global economy. This concentration reflects the development of core capabilities in image and video analysis (36 per cent of patents filed).

Based on an analysis of patents filed since 2012, the report finds that the most significant developments in foundational technologies since 2012 were in supervised or semi-supervised learning techniques (38 per cent of all patent filings). Download it now to discover the key trends, innovators, filing destinations and commercial players in the machine learning space.