PCT Newsletter

July-August 2026 | No. 07-08/2026

New WIPO publications

SPARK report highlights boom in GenAI patenting

Patent activity in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is booming, with over 56,000 patent families published in 2024 and 2025 – more than double the total for the entire previous decade.

Patent Trends Update in GenAI, the latest report in WIPO’s Technology SPARK series, builds on a patent landscape report from 2024 to identify key developments in this fast-evolving field.

Along with a huge acceleration in the volume of related filings, the research reveals changing trends in patent ownership. SoftBank of Japan has become the largest patent holder in the field, with 2,985 patent families published between 2014 and 2025, and large multinational enterprises increasingly feature among the top applicants alongside software and internet companies. 

While China continues to dominate in GenAI patenting volume, accounting for more than 42,000 published patent families in 2024 and 2025, countries including the United States, Japan and Germany saw more dynamic patent growth during that period. 

There has also been a shift in technological focus. Large language models (LLMs) have overtaken generative adversarial networks (GANs) as the dominant GenAI model type, with 14,100 patent family publications for LLMs versus 5,200 for GANs in 2025.

Investment in intangibles reaches record level

Global investment in intangibles such as research and development, software, patents, brands and other IP surpassed USD 10 trillion for the first time in 2025, according to the World Intangible Investment Highlights 2026. 

The study by WIPO and Luiss Business School tracked investment across 29 economies accounting for 57 percent of world GDP. 

The findings underscore the critical – and growing – importance of IP-backed assets for the world economy. Between 2015 and 2025, investment in intangibles grew 2.5 times faster than investment in tangible assets. 

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