Huawei leads WIPO patent applications in 2018
Some 253,000 patents were filed under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in 2018, an increase of 3.9 percent over 2017. And Asia-based innovators filed more than half of all international patent applications via WIPO for the first time in 2018 on significant growth from China, India and the Republic of Korea.
U.S.-based inventors filed the greatest number of PCT patent applications in 2018, trailed closely by China, which is expected to surpass the U.S. within the next two years on current trends.
“Asia is now the majority filer of international patent applications via WIPO, which is an important milestone for that economically dynamic region and underscores the historical geographical shift of innovative activity from West to East,” said Francis Gurry, director general of WIPO in a statement.
In 2018, U.S.-based applicants filed 56,142 PCT applications, followed by applicants from China (53,345) and Japan (49,702). Germany and the Republic of Korea ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, with 19,833 and 17,014 applications. More than half of all PCT applications filed in 2018 came from Asia (50.5 percent), with Europe (24.5 percent) and North America (23.1 percent) accounting for about a quarter each.
Next: Top ten patent filers
Huawei topped the list of individual company filers in 2018 with a record number of 5,405 published PCT applications. Huawei was followed by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. of Japan (2,812), Intel Corp. of the U.S. (2,499), Qualcomm Inc. of the U.S. (2,404) and ZTE Corp. of China (2,080). The top ten ranking is completed by Samsung, BOE Technology, LG Electronics, LM Ericsson and Robert Bosch, in that order.
Among educational institutions, the University of California was the largest user of the PCT system in 2018 with 501 published applications, extending a leading position it has held since 1993. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (216) ranked second, followed by Shenzhen University (201), South China University of Technology (170) and Harvard University (169).
When analysed by application sector the patent applications it can be seen that in 2018 digital communication (8.6 percent of the total) overtook computer technology (8.1 percent) with the largest share of published PCT applications. These two fields were followed by electrical machinery (7 percent), medical technology (6.7 percent) and transport (4.6 percent). Among the top 10 sectors, transport (+11.3 percent), digital communication (+10.1 percent) and semiconductors (+9.8 percent) were the fields with the highest rates of growth in 2018.
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