Patents provide an exclusive legal right for an invention such as a product, process or device that is new, useful, and inventive. It allows patent owners to stop others from making, using, or selling the invention for a limited period, typically 20 years, in exchange for public disclosure of the invention.
In Australia, patent filings reflect both domestic inventive activity and Australia’s role as a destination market for global technology and foreign direct investment. As an open, middle-sized economy, patenting trends in Australia are strongly influenced by economic, technological and policy developments in major overseas jurisdictions.
Four key trends stand out in the 2025 data:
- Resident patenting has strengthened, even as global portfolios are being rationalised.
- Provisional patents and direct filings have expanded, particularly among domestic innovators.
- Cross-border collaboration has softened, consistent with broader economic fragmentation, while Australia-linked collaboration has grown.
- While US activity is increasingly concentrated in health, China is expanding in industrial and applied technologies, and Australian filings are growing in certain engineering-focused domains.
Overall application trends: stability in standard filings
In 2025, Australia received 30,348 standard patent applications, marginally below 30,487 in 2024 (–0.5%) and down from 31,530 in 2023 (–3.8% over 2 years). After a clear post-pandemic peak early in the decade, recent years point to normalisation rather than contraction.
Standard patent grants increased in 2025, rising to 19,555 – an increase of 1.4% above their level in 2024 following 24% growth that year. The increase represents continued examination throughput and steady progress of applications filed in prior years.
Figure 2.1
Standard patent applications and grants in Australia, 2013 to 2025
Stability in aggregate counts, however, masks meaningful structural change.
Across the 2025 data: resident activity strengthened, even as total volumes remained flat. Provisional filings expanded sharply, likely reflecting increased use of digital tools for entry into the patent system. The technology footprints of countries shifted, particularly in applied industrial technologies. International collaboration softened, consistent with broader geoeconomic fragmentation.