Recently, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) hold a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, to release international registration data regarding patents, trademarks and industrial design of 2019. The data shows that China filed 58.99 million patent applications through WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in 2019, which surpassed the United States (57.84 million) and leaped to the first place, becoming the country with the largest number of international patent applications
“Among the applicants who filed the international patent applications through PCT, China has quickly jumped to the top, which highlights that for a long time, the geographical pattern of innovation is shifting to the east, and now the applications filed by Asian applicants accounting for more than 50% of all PCT international patent applications” said Mr. Francis Gurry, the Director General of WIPO.
The data shows that all kinds of intellectual property data reached a new high in 2019. In 2019, applications of international patent filed through PCT were 265,800 pieces, with a growth ratio at 5.2%, applications of international patents filed via the Madrid system were 64,400 pieces, with a growth ration at 5.7%, the number of industrial design applications through the Hague system were 21,807 pieces, with a growth ratio at 10.4%. Among them, the top 5 countries for PCT international patent applications are: China (58,990), United States (57,840), Japan (52,660), German (19,353) and South Korea (19,085); the top 5 countries for filing international patent applications via the Madrid system are: the United States (10,087), German (7,700), China (6,339), France (4,437) and Switzerland (3,729); the top 5 countries for applications of industrial design via the Hague system are: German (4,487), South Korea (2,736), Switzerland (2,178), Italy (1,994) and Netherland (1,376).
In addition, the data shows that according to the classification of PCT international patent applicants, the performance of Chinese companies and universities was quite eye-catching. In 2019, Huawei Technology Co., Ltd. ranked the first with 4,411 PCT international patent applications, followed by Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (2,661), South Korea’s Samsung Electronics (2,334), American Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (2,127) and China Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp., Ltd. (1,927), there are 4 Chinese companies ranked in the top 10 applicants. In terms of university, the University of California ranked the top with 470 international patent applications, Tsinghua University (265) ranked the second and followed by Shenzhen University (247), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (230) and South China University of Technology (164). Among the top 10 universities, 5 are from the United States, 4 are from China and 1 is in South Korea.
“Intellectual property is increasingly at the core of global competition” said Francis Gurry, currently, global innovation on the basis of innovation in medicine, new communication technologies and new solutions to the global challenges are increasing with each passing day. For everyone, no matter where they live, they will benefit from it.
In recent years, China has vigorously performed the strategy of innovation-driven development and the strategy of intellectual property, continuously increased the investments in terms of innovation, research and development, placed great importance on protection of intellectual property, fostered a sound business environment, with significantly improvement in quality and quantity of the intellectual property, furthermore and resulted in the further improvement of the international influence of intellectual property.
