China and India are emerging as powerhouses of innovation and creativity. “In 2005, the number of patent filings in China outnumbered those in the US,” said Partha Iyengar, vice-president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.
“Slightly less than one-tenth of world intellectual property organisation international patents were attributed to emerging markets. If the growth rates remain constant, the emerging market share could reach almost one-fifth in 2012.”
Recently IBM is also promoting innovations by pledging the free use of 500 of their U.S. patents on Open source software…
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpatents.pdf