From the research papers and patents on Earth observation, the development trends are analyzed by means of Thomson Data Analysis-TDA. For 15,829 papers in SCIE and SSCI databases between 2002 and 2007, the top 15 countries and top 10 organizations are analysed in detail. According to the frequency of topic words, the researches are focused on: maicrowave remote sensing, quantity research remote sensing(modelling) , hyperspectral remote sensing, land use and climate change . Based on DII, patents on remote sensing , geographic information system and global positioning system increase slightly between 2000 and 2006, and patents were owned by the United States, Korea, Japan, Germany, France, Australia and China. The top topic words of remote sensing, geographic information system and global positioning system are consistent, so the combination of three
research areas is very close.

Since the 21st century, Japan, the world’s second economy, science and technology power, has made important adjustments of its development strategy, from "scientific and technological innovation in the nation" to "nation of intellectual property rights". With the statistics of patent applications filed in JPO and SIPO , this paper analyzed the development trend in major technologies of Japanese patent applications to provide valuable information for our innovations.