China officially overtook the US to become the world's top source of international patents last year. According to a report released by the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), China had come out on top last year, beating the US by more than 1,000 patent application filings.
The WIPO, a UN agency that manages a system for international patents, released its 2019 annual report in Geneva on Tuesday. The report revealed that China had filed a total of 58,990 patent applications last year using the agency's Patent Cooperation Treaty System (PCT). The number of patent applications placed China on top as the system's biggest user, with the US not far behind with a total of 57,840 patent applications.
This was a landmark achievement for China given that the US had held its top position for more than 40 years. The PCT, which was established in 1978, was put in place to spur innovation in various industries and to help incentivize patent applicants.
According to the report, around 52.4 percent of all the applications filed last year had come from Asia. Right behind China and the US, Japan had ranked third with Germany and South Korea landing in fourth and fifth place, respectively.
The most applications filed by a single company last year was China's Huawei Technologies, which had a total of 4,411 published PCT applications. The Chinese tech giant has held the position for the third consecutive year. Huawei was followed by Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corp with 2,661 published PCT applications and South Korea's Samsung Electronics with 2,334 published PCT applications.
WIPO director general, Francis Gurry, mentioned in a video broadcast that China was fast becoming the driver of innovation in Asia. He added that the continually growing number of patents it has filed underscores the long-term shift of innovation towards the Asian region.
China has come a long way in becoming a major player in the tech and intellectual property rights sector. In 1999, the WIPO reported that China had filed a total of 276 applications. Fast forward to 2019, China's patent application filings have increased by more than 200-fold in two decades.
Gurry told participants of the video conference that China's rapid growth is partly due to its leadership's push for more advanced innovation to create a high-value economy. He noted that China was slowly transitioning from being just the factory of the world to being a world leader in high-end and high-value industries. China's strategy has so far proven to be successful and the surge in patent applications is proof that its strategy is working.
