World Intellectual Property Organization: The number of international patent applications will continue to grow in 2020

  Xinhua News Agency, Geneva, March 2 (Reporter Liu Qu) The World Intellectual Property Organization issued a report on the 2nd that in 2020, despite the huge human and economic losses caused by the new crown pandemic, the number of international patent applications filed through the organization will continue. Among them, the number of patent applications in China and the United States are in the leading position, and both have achieved annual growth.

  The data shows that despite the impact of the epidemic, the global GDP is expected to decrease by 3.5% in 2020, but the number of international patent applications filed through the PCT framework of the World Intellectual Property Organization still increased by 4% to 275,900. The highest number of applications ever.

  Among them, China once again became the country with the largest number of international patent applications under the PCT framework, with the number of applications reaching 68,720, an increase of 16.1% year-on-year.

The United States and Japan ranked second and third with 59,230 and 50,520 respectively, followed by South Korea and Germany.

The number of PCT applications in Asian countries accounted for 53.7% of the total, compared with 35.7% 10 years ago.

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

In the second place are South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, South Korea's LG Electronics Co., and the United States Qualcomm.

  Among educational institutions, the University of California system continues to top the list with 559 applications, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranks second with 269 applications.

This is followed by Shenzhen University, Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University in China.

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

  In terms of international trademark applications, the United States will still file the largest number of international trademark applications using the WIPO Madrid system in 2020, with 1,005, followed by Germany, China, France and the United Kingdom.

Among the top 10 sources, China is the only country to record double-digit growth in 2020, an increase of 16.4%.