What are the world leaders in the edtech industry patenting?

Edtech, or educational technology, is considered one of the fastest growing niches today. This area is not very rich in patents, since there are not many solutions in the educational process that can be protected using this tool. Nevertheless, they exist, and their landscape clearly shows in which direction modern education is developing – in recent years, a lot has been patented here related to AI and VR solutions. We tell you which countries and companies are leading in terms of the number of patents in edtech, and what interesting inventions have been patented in this area.

general review

the global edtech industry evaluate about $194 billion. It received a huge boost during the pandemic, when the demand for remote and online learning increased exponentially. In 2020-2021, edtech has become one of the most popular investment areas for investors of all types. After that, the volume of investment sharply sank. The volume of venture investments invested in the sector of educational technologies, jumped from $5.3 billion in 2019 to $15.6 billion in 2021, and this figure decreased to $6.5 billion in 2022. Total volume of transactions in the first quarter of 2023 fell by 38%

Following investments, the scale of patenting also decreased – according to Global Data estimates, in 2022 the total number of edtech patents fell from 2591 to 1963 pieces.

But the vast majority of experts are confident that the industry will continue to develop and grow – after all, digital education has no alternatives at the present time.

Today, the main trend in edtech is artificial intelligence. From 2018 to 2021, the number of applications for educational technologies built on the use of neural networks increased 4 times. Also among the promising technologies are VR and AR, which allow creating immersive educational solutions, robotization and blockchain.

From 2012 to 2022, according to IPGuardian and WIPO, there were filed about 6000 patents in the field of edtech. Among the innovations patented by market leaders are their own education management systems, virtual spaces for learning activities, methods of teacher training and knowledge assessment. In addition, in recent years, educational technologies using artificial intelligence have been actively developing, which allow evaluating the effectiveness of courses and personalizing programs for students. Let us tell you in more detail what the leading edtech companies from different countries are patenting.

USA

Among the countries in terms of patent activity, the United States leads by a confident margin with a total volume market of $115.8 billion and more than 4,000 submitted applications. Among the leaders of the American market are such companies as Kahoot — the largest online learning game platform in the world, the most popular language learning app Duolingo, an online course platform Coursera and software developer for educational solutions Blackboard.

In addition to these firms, big techs are also in the race to invest in edtech and are developing their own educational solutions. Yes, Mark Zuckerberg develops own tool for online classes, and Microsoft introduces into their technology products for affordable education.

Among the leaders in the number of patents, the educational platform stands out Chegg, filed over 80 applications. Of her latest inventions – implementation technology in the augmented reality content lecture and system digital avatars with many multimedia features, analyzing user behavior.

By the way, a very significant story for the modern market happened recently with Chegg. In April of this year, the company introduced the CheggMate service, built on the connection of educational quizzes with the ChatGPT-4 text neural network. According to the firm’s CEO Dan Rosenzweig, the product is a “pocket tutor” that analyzes the user’s answers and personalizes the program for him. Just a month later, the company’s shares collapsed by 50%. This came amid a poor financial report, in which the company ordered that the company lost about 5% of customers in a year, many of which began to use ChatGPT instead of its services. It turned out that CheggMate adds almost no new features to the standard version of the neural network, while a subscription to it costs the same $9.99 per month.

Australia

As estimated by IP Guardian, Australia takes second in educational technology patents after the US with 258 educational applications over the last 10 years. This is partly due to the fact that many multinational corporations register inventions in the Australian Patent Office. For example, most of the patent applications in Australia filed Apple and Mark Zuckerberg’s company, followed by local firms and organizations.

Startup stands out among Australian businesses JIBB (formerly known as Inkerz), which over the past 10 years filed eight patent applications. The company’s own app uses AI to turn any smartphone camera into an artificial eye that captures writing and drawings on a whiteboard and piece of paper. With the technology, conference participants can add and erase writing on a physical whiteboard with hand movements.

Great Britain

British edtech market in 2021 evaluated at $4.68 billion, and according to the forecast was to grow by an average of 22% until 2026. Total UK registered 565 educational technology companies. Among them is the London-based unicorn Multiverse, which specializes in online tech education. He repeatedly hit in the lists of the fastest growing startups in the world. Among the national leaders in the field, one can also single out a diversified educational and publishing holding Pearsona system of full-time and online education centers Genius Group and platform Multiverse.

Pearson Education, part of a large British holding, is engaged in several educational areas at once – the publication of textbooks, teacher training, the development of assessment systems and other aspects. During its existence, the company filed more than 500 patent applications in the field of education. Among them:

• Grading system student progress, which can compare and contrast different parameters and build recommendations;

• Methodwhich allows you to analyze the user’s qualifications in a narrow field and develop a detailed step-by-step and personalized training plan for him;

• Protection method user data, in which a centralized management system distributes information between processing points in different countries.

Another example is Obrizum, patented educational content recommendation system, which helps to create flexible training systems for personnel training using artificial intelligence.

India

This developing country is one of the world leaders in edtech. Indian market evaluated in $6 billion and is the second in terms of capitalization after the American one. In total, at the beginning of 2022, organizations from this country filed 272 patent applications in the field of education (for other estimated – 159).

The largest edtech company in India and the largest in the world – an educational platform with courses for schoolchildren and programs to prepare for countless Indian state exams Byju’s. This year she attracted investments in the amount of $250 million and could potentially attract another $700 million – and this is against the backdrop of a general lack of investment in start-ups during the crisis period of the global economy. In second place Unacademy is a platform with massive online courses for adults. Also among the leaders stand out an educational platform for IT-specialists Aptechprovider of online learning platforms MPS and a network of schools of additional education for children Zee Learn.

But the leader in patenting in the country is the educational company Practically. In total she filed for registration of 11 patent applications related to educational technologies. Among them, the pride of the company is technology AI Led, which allows using AI to recognize a wide variety of objects – in photographs, pictures and in the real world. Today, the product library includes more than 20,000 3D objects from the school course for grades 6-10.

China

At first glance, it may seem strange that the leaders are not the ubiquitous China, which, thanks to government funding, successfully imposes competition on American giants in such innovative areas as AI and quantum developments.

Chinese education companies have found themselves in an unenviable position due to the harsh regulatory policies of the Chinese government, which does not trust private education as such. In 2021, when edtech was at its peak in all respects both in China and around the world, the Chinese government unexpectedly banned private educational services, as a result of which the quotes of many companies from this area have fallen by 80-90%! After some time, the restrictions were somewhat relaxed, but even today the regulation of edtech in the country is much tougher than in the rest of the world, which hinders its development.

Among the leaders of the national market is a private education service New Orientalpreparation courses for entrance examinations for civil servants Offcn Education and provider of additional out-of-school education TAL Education Group.

Chinese companies are striving to catch up with competitors amid a market downturn: in the first three months of 2023, they filed 191 patent applications in the field of educational innovation. Shanghai Supplementary Education Platform Leads by Number of Patents YiXue Education, filed for the entire time of its existence, more than 180 applications. Among them systemwhich allows you to analyze brain activity during training, as well as service to create personalized learning materials in augmented reality.

Another market leader, company Xiaochuanchuhai Education Technology, develops the online school education platform Zuoyebang. Between 2019 and 2021, she submitted 40 applications for registration of educational technologies. Among her patents – own inventions in the field of educational interface, helping to store and quickly find data.

Other countries

Korean AI startup RIIIDfor the first quarter of 2023 already filed 9 patent applications for educational technologies using neural networks. Among the company’s inventions is the SANTA TOEIC application, which tracks user behavior during training and systemwhich improves the quality of the search for educational content.

Canadian market leader docebo in 2021 patented own method of automatic generation and editing of training materials. Their enterprise learning platform anAI uses neural networks and deep learning to create customized learning materials based on existing ones.

We will devote a separate article to Russian companies.