Intense Global Patent Competition in AI Chatbots... South Korea Ranks 2nd in Annual Growth Rate

Patent application status data in the 'chatbot' field of the top 5 intellectual property countries. Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] As the artificial intelligence-based chatbot market rapidly expands, the international community's patent competition to secure related technologies is also intensifying.

A chatbot is a program that combines 'chatter' and 'robot,' where artificial intelligence responds conversationally in everyday language when a person asks questions via voice or text.

According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office on the 27th, the global chatbot market size is expected to grow from $2.9 billion in 2020 at an annual growth rate of 23.5% to reach $10.5 billion by 2026 (Market and Markets, 2021).

Along with the expansion of the chatbot market size, chatbot-related patents filed in the five major intellectual property countries (Korea, the U.S., Japan, China, and Europe) have shown an average annual growth rate of 8.1% since 2011.

In particular, patents filed between 2011 and 2020 totaled 10,766, which is twice the 5,132 patents filed between 2001 and 2010.

Over the past decade, by nationality of applicants, the U.S. filed the most chatbot-related patents with 43.3% (4,667 patents), followed by China (19.9%, 2,138 patents), Japan (17.4%, 1,874 patents), Korea (13.4%, 1,445 patents), and Europe (3.6%, 383 patents).

However, in terms of average annual growth rate over the past decade, Korea ranked second worldwide at 16.1%, following China at 49.3%. During the same period, the average annual growth rate among the five major intellectual property countries was 8.1%.

The ranking of companies with the most patent filings is led by Google with 712 patents (6.6%), IBM with 583 patents (5.4%), Samsung with 544 patents (5.1%), Microsoft with 444 patents (4.1%), and Apple with 384 patents (3.6%), highlighting the prominence of so-called big tech companies.

Domestic companies' rankings for chatbot-related patent filings are Samsung (544 patents), Hyundai Motor Company (78 patents), Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI, 64 patents), LG (59 patents), and Naver (44 patents).

Park Jae-il, head of the AI Big Data Examination Division at the Korean Intellectual Property Office, said, “In the chatbot market, securing ‘natural language processing technology’ and ‘emotional recognition technology’ is expected to emerge as key tasks in the future,” adding, “The Korean Intellectual Property Office will continue to provide related patent information to support domestic companies’ technology development.”