TN’s head rules as India’s pat­ent fil­ings peaks

NEW DELHI: Declar­ing that ‘India’s innov­a­tion engine is unstop­pable,’ Union Min­is­ter Piy­ush Goyal on Sunday high­lighted the coun­try’s remark­able surge in pat­ent activ­ity, with fil­ings touch­ing a his­toric 1.43 lakh in the fin­an­cial year 2025-26, mark­ing a sharp 30.2 per cent increase over the pre­vi­ous year.

Shar­ing the data in a post on social media plat­form X, Goyal said the growth reflects a con­fid­ent and rap­idly evolving India that is stead­ily emer­ging as a global innov­a­tion power­house.

He emphas­ised that more than 69 per cent of the total pat­ent fil­ings in FY26 were domestic.

“India’s Innov­a­tion Engine is Unstop­pable! Our pat­ent fil­ings soared to a his­toric over 1.43 lakh in FY 2025-26, mark­ing a 30.2 per cent increase over last year,” Goyal noted.

Accord­ing to the data, India recor­ded 1,43,729 pat­ent fil­ings in FY26, up from 1,10,375 in FY25. Domestic fil­ings stood at 98,771, sig­ni­fic­antly higher than 68,201 in the pre­vi­ous year.

Among states, Tamil Nadu led the chart with 22,995 fil­ings, fol­lowed by other major innov­a­tion hubs such as Karnataka and Maha­rashtra.

The min­is­ter also poin­ted to the grow­ing con­tri­bu­tion of edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions, star­tups, MSMEs, and pub­lic research and devel­op­ment bod­ies. Edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions alone accoun­ted for 36.5 per cent of total fil­ings, reflect­ing a strong push from aca­demia in driv­ing innov­a­tion.

“We are the world’s 6th largest pat­ent filer, reflect­ing a con­fid­ent India set to become a global innov­a­tion power­house,” Goyal said.

India’s global stand­ing in innov­a­tion has also improved, with the coun­try now ranked as the sixth-largest pat­ent filer in the world, accord­ing to data aligned with the World Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Organ­isa­tion.

This marks the eighth con­sec­ut­ive year of growth in pat­ent fil­ings, under­scor­ing sus­tained momentum in the coun­try’s intel­lec­tual prop­erty eco­sys­tem.

High­light­ing the role of digital trans­form­a­tion, Goyal noted that nearly 95 per cent of pat­ent applic­a­tions are now filed online, driven by the gov­ern­ment’s push to mod­ern­ise and stream­line pro­cesses under the IP India ini­ti­at­ive.

Over a five-year period, India’s pat­ent fil­ings have wit­nessed a dra­matic rise of 146 per cent, increas­ing from 58,503 in FY21 to 1,43,729 in FY26. The steady upward trend is evid­ent across the years, des­pite minor fluc­tu­ations earlier in the dec­ade.

The data sig­nals a struc­tural shift in India’s innov­a­tion land­scape, with the “Made in India” nar­rat­ive increas­ingly being powered by “Inven­ted in India,” he men­tioned.