India published 929 generative AI patents in 2024 and 2025 alone -- equating to nearly 70 per cent of the 1,350 patents it published over the entire previous decade (2014 to 2023).
India ranks fifth globally in generative AI (GenAI) patent filings, driven by a 64 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2024 and 2025, said a recent report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), an agency of the United Nations.
The push for patents illustrates how companies are moving from experimentation to large commercial deployment of AI.
India published 929 generative AI patents in 2024 and 2025 alone -- equating to nearly 70 per cent of the 1,350 patents it published over the entire previous decade (2014 to 2023).
Key Points
- India ranked fifth globally in generative AI patent filings, with a 64% CAGR between 2024 and 2025.
- China accounted for over 70% of global GenAI patents, while the US and Japan also recorded rapid growth.
- Large language model patents have overtaken GAN patents as the biggest GenAI category by patent volume.
China dominates GenAI race
China led the global rankings with 43,383 AI patent filings in 2024 and 2025 -- surpassing its total output of 38,210 over the previous decade.
The country now accounts for over 70 per cent of all GenAI patents published worldwide, illustrating its innovation prowess.
The United States follows with a 10 per cent share of global GenAI patents over the past two years.
Its filings expanded at a 92 per cent CAGR, reflecting how fast commercial enterprise is driving patenting activity in that country.
US and Japan accelerate
Japan took third place with a 6.5 per cent share of published patents over the last two years, posting a staggering 230 per cent CAGR.
This surge was largely driven by SoftBank, which emerged as the single largest GenAI patent holder in 2025 with over 3,000 published patent families.
Rounding out the top five were South Korea with a 3.7 per cent share, and India at 2 per cent.
However, those after the top five countries -- like Germany in sixth place, the United Kingdom at the number eight spot, and Canada and Switzerland -- are clearly narrowing the gap with countries like India as they hit the accelerator on patenting.
LLM patents overtake GANs
Patents for large language models (LLMs) have now overtaken generative adversarial networks (GANs) -- which help make photos, video and audio more realistic and identify fakes -- as the largest GenAI model category by patent volume.
Between 2014 and 2025, as many as 20,900 patent families were published in the LLM category, compared to 18,800 in the GAN category.
Global AI competition intensifies
In 2025, LLM patents published were five times higher than those for GANs.
These LLM patents span multiple modalities, including text, code, video, voice, music, and images.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff
