According to the data released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva On February 10, in 2021, Chinese applicants submitted 69,500 international patent applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) , a year-on-year increase of 0.9%, ranking first in the number of applications for three consecutive years.   

In 2021, global innovators have overcome the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and promoted the total number of PCT international patent applications to grow against the trend, reaching 277,500, a year-on-year increase of 0.9% and a record high. The top 5 countries by number of applications are China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Germany.

A total of 13 Chinese enterprises have entered the top 50 of the global PCT international patent applicant list, an increase of 1 from 2020, in which Huawei topped the list for five consecutive years with 6,952 applications, OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications (2,208) and BOE (1,980) ranked sixth and seventh respectively. The remaining 10 enterprises in the top 50 are Ping An Technology, ZTE, VIVO Mobile Communications, Shenzhen DJI, Shenzhen AAC Acoustics Technology, Wuhan Huaxing Optoelectronics, Shenzhen Huaxing Optoelectronics, Tencent, ByteDance, and Xiaomi.

There were 19 universities of China in total included in the top 50 of the PCT international patent applicant rankings of global educational institutions, an increase of 4 compared with 2020. China is the country with the largest number of universities on the list, and the United States ranked second (18). Among the 19 universities, Zhejiang University ranked second with 306 applications, second only to the University of California, and Tsinghua University, South China University of Technology and Soochow University entered the top 10. Other universities in the top 50 were Dalian University of Technology, Shenzhen University, Shandong University, Peking University etc., 15 universities in total.

In terms of technical fields, computer technology (9.9%) accounted for the largest proportion of PCT international patent applications, followed by digital communication (9.0%), medical technology (7.1%), electrical machinery (6.9%) and measurement (4.6%). Among the top 10 technology fields in terms of applications, the filings for pharmaceuticals grew the fastest, reaching 12.8%, followed by biotechnology (+9.5%), computer technology (+7.2%) and digital communications (+6.9%).

In addition, in 2021, the number of international trademark applications submitted by global applicants through the Madrid system reached 73,100, a year-on-year increase of 14.4%, which is the fastest growth rate since 2005. China, with 5,272 applications, continues to rank third after the United States (13,276) and Germany (8,799) in the world.

From CNIPA

February 10th, 2022