China is on Top for Patent filling

China top innovator :1 million patent requests in year: UN

GENEVA: China is driving Asian-led growth in innovation worldwide, becoming the first country to file 1 million patent applications in a single year, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said on Wednesday.

Chinese innovators filed most of their 2015 applications in electrical engineering, which includes telecoms, followed by computer technology and semiconductors, and measurement instruments, including medical technology, the UN agency said.

The figures for China are quite extraordinary. It is the first patent office in the world to receive more than 1 million applications,” WIPO director-general Francis Gurry told a news briefing to launch its report, “World Intellectual Property Indicators”.

Worldwide, some 2.9 million patent applications were filed last year, a 7.8% increase over 2014, WIPO said. Roughly two in three patents are ultimately approved, Gurry said. The United States ranked second last year with 526,296 patent applications, followed by Japan at 454,285 and South Korea with 238,015.

Gurry was asked about protectionist remarks by US President-elect Donald Trump, who has announced he would kill an ambitious regional trade pact, the Trans Pacific Partnership Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and consequences for innovation. Gurry said there had been no general policy statement on innovation thus far.

“In respect of the trade element, what we can say is that the United States remains clearly the biggest filer of applications externally (abroad). So this obviously is related to trade and investment,” he said. “So they have important stakes, very important stakes in intellectual property and trade.” According to the data released at a press conference on January 14th, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China received over 1 million applications for invention patents in 2015, which hits a new record high over the years.

Data show that 1.102 million applications for invention patents were received in China in 2015, up 18.7 percent year on year, being the top patent application list of the world for 5 years; about 359,000 invention patents were authorized, 263,000 of which were granted to domestic applicants, 100,000 more than in 2014, up 61.9 percent year on year. By the end of 2015, China holds 872,000 valid patents of invention, and the patents per annum for each 10,000 head of population reached to 6.3.

Besides, SIPO released the details of China’s patent data in 2015. There are 3 provinces (municipalities, not including Hongkong, Macao and Taiwan) obtaining over 30,000 invention patents in 2015, which are Jiangsu (36,015), Beijing (35,308) and Guangdong (33,477). China’s top oil-refiner Sinopec obtained 2,844 invention patents, the most among all Chinese firms, followed by telecom giants ZTE (2,673) and Huawei (2,413).

Among the top ten foreign enterprises, Qualcomm gets to the top with 1,350 invention patents, followed by Canon (1,273), Toyota (1,240), Panasonic (1,117) and Mitsubishi Electrics (1,095). Some well-known foreign enterprises, like GM, Bosch, Philips, Siemens and Samsung are also on the list.

In 2015, SIPO received 30,548 PCT applications, up 16.7% year on year. 28,399 of them were from domestic users, making 93%, up 18.3% year on year; 2,149 were international, making 7.0%. There were 16 provinces (municipalities) that filed more than 100 PCT applications in 2015. The top 5 provinces (municipalities) for PCT applications were Guangdong (15,190), Beijing , Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which contributed to 85% of the total domestic PCT filings.