New AI industry research points to an issue across the technology sector: Canada has a lot of smart people but isn’t helping them sell their ideas.
Driving the news: From 2009 to 2018, Canada had the fifth-most AI patents globally. By 2023, it fell to the eighth spot, according to a new report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). In WIPO’s database, we found 80 Canadian AI patents published last year, down from 190 in 2022, with only 18 published so far in 2024.
- That’s despite how many AI-related breakthroughs there are to be turned into patents — Canada has published the fifth-most scientific papers on generative AI since 2010.
- Plus, papers from the University of Montreal are the third-most cited, with the University of Toronto ranked 19th, pointing to Canada’s influence in research.
Catch-up: A similar trend is happening with other tech. An earlier WIPO analysis found that, based on its volume of research, Canada should have nearly twice as many patents in electronics and information technology, and four times as many semiconductor patents.
Why it matters: Patents point to how well a country commercializes its intellectual property — filing a patent is a key step in selling the tech you’ve developed. And a gap between research and patents points to an ecosystem that has big ideas, but isn’t selling them.
Yes, but: Someone is making money off of Canadian ideas. While R&D labs from big foreign companies employ Canadian talent, the companies own the IP and patents for what that talent comes up with — and get the money from commercializing them.
- Canada has the third-most of these labs globally, according to the latest StartupBlink ecosystem report.
What’s next: The federal government recently wrapped consultations on a “patent box” system, which gives companies a tax break on income generated from IP developed in Canada. Another 215 IP applications could come from non-profit CMC Microsystems, which got $120 million from Ottawa on Thursday for a program to bolster the semiconductor industry.