This Patent Landscape Report on Graphite and its Applications was prepared following
a related request from Sri Lanka.
This publication was prepared under the stewardship of Marco Alemán (Assistant
Director General, IP and Innovation Ecosystems Sector), under the direction of
Alejandro Roca Campañá (Senior Director, Technology and Innovation Support Division)
and Andrew Czajkowski (Director, Technology and Innovation Support Division), with
the generous financial support by Funds-In-Trust Japan Industrial Property Global
provided by the Japan Patent Office.
The report was prepared by a project team initially led by Irene Kitsara (IP Information
Officer, Technology and Innovation Support Division) and then by Lakshmi Supriya
(Patent Analytics Officer, Technology and Innovation Support Division), members
from the patent analytics team of IPOS International comprising Alfred Yip (Director,
Patent Search, Examination and Analytics), Huang Jinquan (Head, Patent Analytics),
Sun Ting (Senior Analyst) and Pan Shanshan (Analyst), Björn Jürgens (Consultant), Craig
Dsouza (Young Expert Professional, Technology and Innovation Support Division).
Conclusion:
The wide range of graphite applications has stemmed from an intensive research and
development effort worldwide. Patent filings for graphite-related technologies have originated
from over 60 countries across every region. However, although this suggests graphite innovation
is global, it is actually the case that graphite-related patent families originate predominantly
from just a few countries. Specifically, the top five applicant origins are China, Japan, the Republic
of Korea, the United States and the Russian Federation. Together, they account for the vast
majority (95 percent) of global patenting output.
China is dominant among the top five applicant origins, responsible for four in every five graphite
patent families filed worldwide in the last decade. It is most active in the exploitation of flake
graphite, being home to the world’s second-largest reserve of natural graphite and the primary
supplier of flake graphite to the global market. Artificial graphite, on the other hand, is a wellexplored alternative to natural graphite, especially in countries without a rich natural reserve,
such the Republic of Korea.
Battery applications were the key driver of graphite technologies, accounting for 10–15 percent
of global graphite production. Among all graphite uses and products, graphite for battery
applications is the one that has attracted the most intensive patent filing, with over 8,000 patent
applications filed from 2012 to 2021. Such a high level of patenting activity is expected to continue,
as the global effort to fight climate change intensifies. In particular, the explosive market growth
of EVs and large-scale energy storage will demand more graphite innovations; for example, novel
graphite-based anode solutions with greater energy density and better performance.
The two other application areas that recorded intense patent activity were ceramics and heat
dissipation. Ceramic applications have remained an active patenting field, attributable to their
indispensable role in refractory applications. In addition, novel graphite-filled ceramic materials
and composites have been explored for a broad range of uses, including in automotive and
power machinery applications. Graphite for heat dissipation is one of the few areas where
the rest of the world has shown a comparable patenting output to China, with substantial
contributions coming from Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United States and Taiwan Province
of China. As the level of power dissipation has increased owing to a continual performance
improvement in electronics, research has shifted toward novel graphite-based compositions and
microstructures for better heat dissipation performance.
Download report:
https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo-pub-1083-en-patent-landscape-report-graphite-and-its-applications.pdf
