Korea’s humanoid patent share falls to 4.6% as China reaches 60.8%

South Korea’s share of humanoid robot patent filings at the IP5 offices — the patent offices of the US, China, Europe, Japan and Korea — fell to 4.6% in the first half of 2026, from 6.3% in 2024 and 5.2% in 2025. China’s share rose from 51.8% in 2024 to 60.8%, and the United States fell from 27.3% to 21.8%. The figures are Intellectual Property Office data released on September 28, 2026 by the office of Rep. Lee Jeong-heon, a member of the National Assembly’s science and ICT committee.

In robot foundation models the split over the same period was China 66.3%, the US 14.1% and Korea 8.8%. Why it matters: Korea is putting public money into humanoid hardware and, from 2027, into robot foundation models. On these figures it enters both behind on claimed intellectual property.

The counts do not match the shares

All three outlets that carried the data also printed application counts: 1,584 for China, 113 for the US and 35 for Korea in the first half of 2026, and 2,573, 640 and 97 for 2025. Those counts cannot be the base for the shares. If 1,584 is 60.8% of the total, the total is about 2,600, and 113 and 35 would be roughly 4.3% and 1.3% — not 21.8% and 4.6%. None of the three reports explains the gap. Until the office sets out its method, the shares are the series to compare across years, and the counts are better read as an order of magnitude: China filed about 45 times as many humanoid applications as Korea in the half.

The publication lag adds a second caution. The office said applications appear in its search system only 18 months after filing, so the 2025 and 2026 figures will rise as filings are published. On the printed counts, US applications fell from 640 in 2025 to 113 in the first half of 2026. A lag produces that kind of drop as readily as a real slowdown, and the 2026 shares will move as the data fill in.

Volume is not portfolio strength

Filing shares measure activity, not quality. The LexisNexis Patent Asset Index published July 29 weighted portfolios by technical relevance and market coverage, and still put five Chinese companies — Fourier, AgiBot, LimX Dynamics, Pudu Robotics and Unitree — at the top, while finding that US portfolios score higher per patent. No Korean company made its top ten. The two datasets agree on volume. On quality, the per-patent scores favour US filers, the one measure in that index on which China does not lead.

Lee framed the numbers as a timing problem, saying that even a one- to two-year delay in AI and robotics innovation could result in an irreversible technological gap.

Korea’s response starts with a patent map

Two days later, on September 30, the Intellectual Property Office and the Ministry of Science and ICT presented a plan to set patent strategy before national R&D projects start, with physical AI first: a national patent strategy map for the field from the second half of 2026, and a “K-Patent Pool” in which Korean patents in areas such as humanoids are used jointly. The same ministry plans to begin robot foundation model development in 2027 through two parallel consortia. Korea’s 8.8% share of robot foundation model filings in the first half of 2026 is its strongest number in this dataset, and it is the baseline that programme will be measured against.