No Korean pharma firms on global top 100 innovators list

[Courtesy of each company]

As in previous years, eight Korean companies made the list of the top 100 global innovators in 2024, but bucking the global trend, no Korean pharmaceutical company made the cut, according to a LexisNexis report said on Tuesday.

The eight companies that did make it onto the list are Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, LG Chem, Hyundai Motor, Kia, CJ, Samsung SDI, and KT&G. Samsung Electronics continues to enhance its competitiveness in traditional core areas such as semiconductors and organic materials, and drew attention with its recent growth in the wireless communication sector. LG Electronics demonstrates robust patent competitiveness in wireless communication network technology, while LG Chem excels in patents related to secondary batteries and battery cells.

In terms of the country breakdown of the top 100 companies, U.S. companies dominate the list with 51. Korea is second with eight, followed by China with seven and Japan with five. Both China and Japan had fewer companies than in 2023, whose top 100 list including 13 Chinese companies and six Japanese companies.

While American companies have been outpacing Chinese and Japanese counterparts in patent innovation, Korean companies have been fending off the advances, LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions senior consultant Donghyun Kim.

The number of Korean companies in the list was the same as the previous year, indicating that Korean enterprises are holding their ground in the increasingly intense patent wars between companies globally.

However, there are observations that patents from Korean companies are concentrated in specific fields. Among the 100 companies, the pharmaceutical industry made up the largest portion, with 20 companies classified as pharmaceutical firms but none of which are Korean.

Kim emphasized that Korean companies’ patent technologies are primarily focused on electronics, chemistry, materials, automobiles, and semiconductors, which is a divergence from global trends.

Korea also bucked the global trend with no changes to the number of companies on the list, suggesting that patent development continues to be centered on large companies.