On November 21, 2023, the JPO announced recent trends in business-related inventions made possible by information and communication technology.
The number of patent applications for business-related inventions has been on the rise for the past decade, reaching 13,032 in FY2021.

This is due to the spread of smartphones and social networking services, and the creation of new services in the financial sector and other areas as a result of the development of AI and IoT technologies.

Application trends in each country have also increased over the past 10 years, with a particularly remarkable increase in China, where the number of applications is estimated to exceed 60,000 as of 2020.

Japan Patent Office：
https://www.jpo.go.jp/system/patent/gaiyo/sesaku/biz_pat.html