Asian boom led record patent filings in 2007 -- WIPO

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States remains the world's innovative powerhouse but Asian nations such as South Korea and China are making enormous strides, the United Nations agency handling patent applications said on Thursday.

A record 156,100 international patent applications were filed worldwide last year, one in three of them by the United States, the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) said.

Inventors in Japan stayed in second place with 17.8 percent of the total, followed by Germany with 11.6 percent.

South Korea overtook France to place fourth with 4.5 percent of all applications, and China was seventh, filing 38.1 percent more applications than in 2006 and dislodging the Netherlands, WIPO said in a statement.

"The growth in patent filings by a number of countries in northeast Asia and their share of overall patenting activity is impressive and confirms shifting patterns of innovation around the world," said WIPO director-general Kamil Idris.

The number of applications was up 4.7 percent from 2006, and applications from northeast Asian nations -- China, Japan and South Korea -- accounted for 25.8 percent of the total.

China has come under huge international pressure to tighten its own intellectual property and anti-piracy laws.

WIPO receives an average of 400 applications every day through the Patent Cooperation Treaty. The 1978 pact, ratified by 138 countries, allows companies to seek protection for an invention in several countries at once.

The largest proportion of applications in 2007 related to telecommunications (10.5 percent), information technology (10.1 percent) and pharmaceuticals (9.3 percent), it said. The fastest growing areas are nuclear engineering and telecommunications.