Amidst all the talk of increasing workforce participation and returning the budget to surplus in 2012-13, it’s perhaps unsurprising to find no big ticket items directly affecting IP in the 2011-12 Federal Budget handed on Tuesday night by Treasurer Wayne Swan.
Clearly a number of industry-specific measures will affect certain businesses, including the already publicised decisions to defer PBS listing of six PBAC-approved drugs and the move to requiring Cabinet approval for all future PBS listing decisions with a financial consequence, which will affect the pharmaceutical industry. However, there are only a small number of budget measures relating to innovation more generally.
In the Innovation, Industry, Science and Research portfolio, the Government has committed new funding to:
- establishing an Australia-China Science and Research Fund,
- the Science for Australia’s Future – Inspiring Australia program, and
- supporting the Australia / New Zealand bid for the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope.
In supporting industry, the Government has committed further funding to the Buy Australian at Home and Abroad program, which assists local companies to link with international projects.
However, for the IP nerds amongst us, if you’ve ever wondered just how many applications are made to register IP rights in Australia, the budget papers reveal the volume of applications which come across IP Australia’s desk each year.
So, to save you diving into the murky depths of this year’s budget papers, we can reveal that in the next financial year IP Australia expects to receive:
- 26,382 patent applications,
- 110,720 trade mark applications,
- 5,420 design applications, and
- 312 plant breeder’s rights applications.
