South Korea’s Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has taken the top spot in the Patent Board’s annual rankings of government agency patents, the Patent Board said in early October.

  For the year ending June 30, the ETRI had unseated the US Navy at the top of the table. The South Korean agency led in the value of its patents as well as in the number of patents issued. By the Patent Board’s scoring system, ETRI edged out the Navy by a score of 212-135. The institute was granted 286 patents over the past year compared to the Navy’s 236.

  ETRI had ranked second for the past three years.
 
  Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry occupied the 6th and 9th positions, respectively. The United States captured five of the top 10 positions, with the others going to Singapore’sAgency for Science Technology & Research and France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). The Patent Board noted that CNRS had increased its patent volume by nearly 40% over last year.

  Data from the United Nations Development Programme released in early 2009 indicated that South Korea ranked first globally in the number of US patents received per capita, at a rate of 1,113 per million people. Japan was second at 857 per million, with the US third at 244 per million.