The epidemic hardly prevents the pace of innovation, China ranks first in the world in the number of international patent applications

　　The World Intellectual Property Organization released a report stating that the epidemic has not stopped the pace of global innovation——

　　China's number of international patent applications ranks first in the world

　　The latest report released by the World Intellectual Property Organization pointed out that in 2020, despite the huge human and economic losses caused by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the number of international patent applications will continue to grow and hit a record high.

This means that the epidemic has not stopped the pace of global innovation.

Among them, China's application volume increased by 16.1% year-on-year, continuing to maintain the good results of countries with the largest number of international patent applications.

However, there has been an "expected decline" in the number of international trademark applications, with a decrease of 0.6%.

This is the first decline since the 2008 international financial crisis.

　　Geneva News (Reporter Yang Haiquan) The World Intellectual Property Organization released the 2020 report on international patents, international trademarks and design systems on March 2.

The report pointed out that the epidemic has failed to stop the pace of global innovation.

Although the new crown pneumonia epidemic has caused huge global human and economic losses, the number of international patent applications in 2020 will continue to grow.

　　The report shows that China still maintains the world’s “Patent Cooperation Treaty” (PCT) system of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which is the country with the largest number of international patent applications.

　　The number of international patent applications filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system of the World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the indicators widely used to measure global innovation activities.

In 2020, despite a 3.5% drop in global GDP caused by the epidemic, the number of international patent applications under the PCT system has increased by 4% to 275,900, a record high.

At the same time, the long-term trend of international patent applications under the PCT system shows that innovation activities are becoming increasingly globalized. Among them, Asia accounted for 53.7% of all PCT applications, compared with 35.7% 10 years ago.

　　In 2020, the number of applications filed by the two major users of the PCT system, China and the United States, both achieved annual growth.

Among them, China’s applications amounted to 68,720, an increase of 16.1% year-on-year, and continued to rank as the largest user of the PCT system; followed by the United States with 59,230 applications, an increase of 3% year-on-year; Japan’s applications amounted to 50,520, A year-on-year decrease of 4.1%; South Korea’s applications amounted to 2,060, an increase of 5.2% year-on-year; German applications amounted to 18,643, a year-on-year decrease of 3.7%.

There were also strong growth in the number of international patent applications in some countries, including Saudi Arabia (956 cases, an increase of 73.2% year-on-year), Malaysia (255 cases, an increase of 26.2% year-on-year), Chile (262 cases, an increase of 17% year-on-year), Singapore (1278 cases) , A year-on-year increase of 14.9%) and Brazil (697 cases, a year-on-year increase of 8.4%).

　　Trademark applications often mean the introduction of new goods and services, and the progress of both is currently slowing down due to the epidemic.

In 2020, the number of international trademark applications under the International Trademark Registration System of the World Intellectual Property Organization has seen an "expected decline", a decrease of 0.6%, and the number has dropped to 63,800.

This is the first decline since the 2008 international financial crisis.

　　The impact of the epidemic on the economy has also affected the data on the protection of industrial designs in the International Registration System of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

In 2020, the demand for industrial designs fell 15% year-on-year to 18,580 items.

This is the first decline since 2006.

　　The global demand for intellectual property helps innovators and companies to bring their ideas to the market, and this demand is roughly in line with the performance of the global economy.

In the past 10 years, the use of WIPO's global intellectual property services, especially the use of the PCT, has continued to grow, and the growth momentum has exceeded the growth of global GDP.

　　In 2020, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. became the largest applicant in the PCT system with 5,464 applications for the fourth consecutive year.

In the second place are South Korea's Samsung Electronics (3093), Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (2810), South Korea's LG Electronics (2759) and Qualcomm (2173).

　　Among educational institutions, in 2020, the University of California continues to top the list of applicants with 559 applications.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (269 cases) ranked second, followed by Shenzhen University (252 cases), Tsinghua University (231 cases) and Zhejiang University (209 cases).

Of the top 10 universities on the list, 5 are from China, 4 are from the United States, and 1 is from Japan.

　　In the technical field, computer technology accounts for the largest proportion of PCT applications (9.2%), followed by digital communications (8.3%), medical technology (6.6%), electrical machinery (6.6%) and measurement (4.8%).

In 2020, among the top ten technologies, 6 technologies will experience double-digit growth. Among them, audio-visual technology has the fastest growth rate, with a year-on-year growth of 29.5%.

　　In 2020, applicants from the United States filed the largest number of international trademark applications in the WIPO International Trademark Registration System (1,0005), followed by Germany (7334), China (7075), France (3716) and the United Kingdom ( 3679 pieces).

Among the top ten sources of applicants, China was the only country that experienced double-digit growth (a year-on-year increase of 16.4%).

The United Kingdom and Italy also experienced significant growth.

　　In 2020, among the international applications accepted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the most involved categories are computer software and hardware and other electrical or electronic devices, accounting for 10.6% of the total that year.

This is followed by business services (8.1%) and technical services (7.1%).

　　In 2020, the number of applications for the protection of industrial designs under the International Registration System of the World Intellectual Property Organization will be significantly reduced.

Germany continues to occupy the position of the largest user of the system with 3666 designs.

Followed by the United States (2211 items), Switzerland (1994), South Korea (1669 items) and Italy (1231 items).

Among the top ten countries of origin, the United States, Turkey, and China are the only three countries with a positive growth in applications, with year-on-year growth rates of 62.7%, 34.7%, and 22.7%, respectively.

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics topped the applicant list with 859 designs for the fourth consecutive year, followed by Procter & Gamble of the United States (623), Fonkel Meubelmarketing of the Netherlands (569), Volkswagen of Germany (524) and China’s Beijing Xiaomi Mobile Software Limited company (516 items).

This is the first time that a Chinese company has been among the top five applicants.

　　Designs related to transportation vehicles accounted for the largest proportion of all designs (10.1%), followed by recording and communication equipment (8.8%), packaging and containers (8.4%), furniture (7.4%), lighting equipment (6.9%) ).

Among the top ten categories, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics have increased on a large scale, with a year-on-year increase of 42.6%.

　　In 2020, in accordance with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), trademark owners submitted a record 4,204 cases involving 7,247 domain names to the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center, bringing the total number of WIPO domain name dispute cases to From 50541.

Such cases include multiple infringing domain names registered using the epidemic.

Domain name infringement cases with the suffix ".com" accounted for 75% of WIPO gTLD cases, followed by cases with the suffix ".net" and ".org", accounting for 4% and 3% respectively.

　　In 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organization provided dispute resolution services for more than 75 country code top-level domains, such as ".CN" (China), ".EU" (EU), etc.

The rapid growth of such cases reflects the growing importance of national domain names to consumers.

The parties involved in the unified domain name dispute case come from 127 countries, of which the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Germany are the five countries with the largest number of cases.