In 2019, China overtook the United States to have the largest number of international patent filings, a report released today by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) showed.
In 2019, countries around the world submitted a total of 265,800 international patents through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, an increase of 5.2% compared with 253,000 in 2018.
In addition to patents, WIPO received 64,400 international trademark applications and 21,807 industrial design applications in 2019, up 5.7% and 10.4% respectively.
The United States is well known in the field of science and technology, so since the WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty was launched in 1978, the United States has been the world’s largest international patent applicant for more than 40 years and was surpassed by China in 2019.
In 2019, China filed 58,990 patent applications through the "Patent Cooperation Treaty" mechanism, an increase of more than 5,000 compared to 53,355 in 2018, ranking first in the world.
The United States ranked second with 57840 patent applications, and 56142 patent applications filed in 2018.
After the United States, Japan, Germany, and South Korea ranked third, fourth, and fifth.
The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization Francis Gurry also congratulated China on its achievements.
He said that China has surpassed the United States to become the number one international patent application, which means that the global innovation landscape is shifting to the East. At present, the number of applications from Asian countries has exceeded the international Half of the total.
Gurry said that in 1999, China had submitted only 276 international patent applications to WIPO, and now it has reached 58,990. The number of patent applications in China has increased more than 200 times in 20 years.
