   Wednesday, 7 March 2012  Patents: dead, broken -- or just not
working perfectly?  The World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) is celebrating the good news that, despite difficult
economic conditions, Patent Cooperation Treaty international
filings set a new record in 2011 with 181,900 applications –
that's 10.7% up on 2010 and the fastest rate of growth since
2005. Top filing countries China, Japan and the US accounted for
82% of the total growth. Chinese telecommunications company ZTE
Corporation was the biggest filer. There are loads of statistics
on view, and names of companies and countries too, for those who
(like this Kat) enjoy reading them.  The past few years have
been a period in which we have increasingly been forced to
listen to the same mantra about the patent system being broken,
if not actually dead or dying. Yet thanks to the patent system
we're enjoying an ever-growing list of new products, services,
processes -- and information about the world we live in, via
increasingly searchab