Ranking of Japanese Companies of International Applications Filed by Female Engineers Announced

For the first time, the Japanese branch of the Word Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ranked Japanese companies having a high proportion of women inventors included as applicants for international patent applications. Chemical companies in particular stand out. The top five companies are as follows:

No.1 Hitachi Chemical Company, Ltd. 43.6%
No.2 Tokyo University 42.0%
No.3 Idemitsu Kosan Co.,Ltd. 40.9%
No.4 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. 40.3%
No.5 Kao Corporation 36.7%
(2015-2017from WIPO)

Around the world, only 30% of international applications filed in 2017 had woman inventors listed. Ranked by countries, the Republic of Korea is in first place, second place is the People’s Republic of China, and Belgium comes in third place. Japan was ranked 17th overall. With respect to areas of industry, first place is biotechnology with medicine and chemistry following.