A decade ago, most patent filings in India came from foreign corporations protecting their turf.
Last year, nearly 7 in 10 came from Indians.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal announced on April 12 that India recorded 1,43,729 patent filings in FY 2025-26 — a 30.2% jump from 1,10,375 the previous year. The number that matters more: domestic filers accounted for 69% of those applications. India is now the world’s sixth-largest patent filer, per WIPO data. Over five years, filings surged 146% — from 58,503 in FY21 to where they stand today.
That’s the headline. Here’s what it doesn’t tell you.
Who’s Actually Filing
Tamil Nadu led all states with 22,995 patent filings — more than many countries manage in a year. Karnataka and Maharashtra rounded out the top three, with Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Telangana emerging as newer contributors.
The surprise: educational institutions filed 36.5% of all patents. IITs, IISc, and state universities aren’t just publishing research papers anymore — they’re claiming intellectual property. Government incentives — part of the budget’s semiconductor and innovation push — and university rankings that reward IP output are turning labs into filing machines. Nearly 95% of applications now go through the IP India digital platform, a process that used to take weeks of paperwork.
The infrastructure is ready. The question is whether the patents themselves are.
The Number That Should Make You Pause
Filing a patent and getting one granted are very different things. India’s patent office has far fewer examiners than it needs, and pendency periods remain long. Many startups file provisionally — partly for investor optics, not breakthrough innovation. For context: China files over 1.5 million patents annually.
But the composition shift is what deserves attention. A decade ago, foreign MNCs dominated India’s patent landscape — filing defensively to protect market share, not to build here. Now, Indian startups, universities, and MSMEs are the majority filers. That changes who controls the intellectual property behind India’s semiconductor ambitions, its AI development, and its pharmaceutical generics pipeline.
India went from a country where foreign companies patented things at it to one where Indians patent things from it. Whether those 1.43 lakh filings turn into products — or just paperwork — is the test that no minister announced.