Australian IP report 2025
The IP system is highly flexible to support the needs of diverse innovators. For example, applicants have considerable flexibility to influence patent application timeframes. In 2024, IP Australia commissioned a study to understand the strategic incentives of businesses to speed up or delay the patent process, and the economic impacts. The research found that for small innovators, who may engage with IP early in their strategic development, this flexibility delivers tangible economic benefits – more innovations, more commercialised products, greater lifetime value to their IP.
Key findings
- The median time from when an applicant requests IP Australia to commence substantive examination of their patent to when the patent is accepted for grant is 1.3 years, as of 2020 (latest complete data). There is significant variation in patent application timeframes, driven largely by applicant behaviour and preferences.
- In general, applicants’ use of IP Australia’s freely available options to speed up examination is linked to stronger post-grant outcomes – they are more likely to renew, commercialise and build on their patents.
- Large foreign firms are the least likely to delay patent examination in Australia. When they do so it tends to be for patents with weaker post-grant outcomes.
- For small innovators, who may need to establish priority claims on their inventions before searching for investment and resources, delays tend to predict stronger post-grant outcomes.
- Patent grant delays tend to narrow and slow follow-on innovation by an applicant’s domestic rivals. However, rivals may look to a patent’s outcomes overseas in making technology and market investments.
Commissioned by IP Australia, the study was undertaken by Kyle Higham, a Fellow at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research in New Zealand, Euan Richardson from Motu, and Gaétan de Rassenfosse, Associate Professor in Science & Technology Policy at Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.
The study involved a quantitative analysis of the nature and impact of delays across four post-grant outcomes:
- the lifetime over which the applicant renews the patent, indicating the patent’s value
- the likelihood that the applicant commercialises the patent in the form of a patent-protected product
- the likelihood of the applicant citing the patent in their future patent activity (with a focus on their US patents), indicating follow-on innovation within the firm
- the likelihood of the applicant’s Australian competitors citing the patent in their future patent activity (with a focus on their global patents), indicating follow-on innovation more broadly.
To study used data on 316,077 standard patents granted by IP Australia from 2004 to 2016 (excluding divisionals) as well as data on equivalent patents (for the same or similar inventions) filed in other jurisdictions. The data was combined from several sources, including IP Australia’s IPRAPID dataset, the PATSTAT global patent database, PatentsView data from the United States Patent and Trade Mark Office (USPTO), and IPRoduct, a dataset linking patents to products based on ‘virtual patent markings,’ webpages that list the patents related to a firm’s products.
Options to influence patent application timeframes
IP Australia’s examination deferral system
As in many major jurisdictions, Australia’s IP system provides options to defer examination. In Australia, applicants can influence when substantive examination of their patent commences by submitting a request for examination (RFE):
- After filing for a patent in Australia, applicants have 5 years to submit an RFE or their application will lapse.
- Within that period, Australia’s Commissioner of Patents may direct an applicant to request examination. The applicant then has 2 months to submit an RFE or the application lapses.
Rather than waiting to be directed, applicants can voluntarily request examination early and unprompted. In practice, this option is used for 41.9% of patents granted by IP Australia.
Options for expedited examination
Several additional options are available for applicants to speed up the examination process:
- “Fast track” examination is available for applications related to green technology and for applications submitted by small and medium enterprise.
- Applicants can request fast track examination on the basis of specific needs, such as pressures in commercial licensing or infringement proceedings.
- Applicants who hold a patent allowed in another eligible jurisdiction qualify to have a corresponding Australian patent application examined more quickly through the Patent Prosecution Highway.
Options for third parties
In Australia, third parties such as an applicant’s competitors can also influence patent timeframes. For example, they may ask the patent office to direct an applicant to submit a timely examination request. This has the advantage of more quickly resolving uncertainty around pending patent claims.
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