On February 28, 2023, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) released its latest report in Geneva, which stated that in 2022, the number of international patent applications submitted by China through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) reached 70,015, an increase of 0.6% year-on-year, and continued to rank first in the world.
The report points out that in 2022, the number of PCT applications increased slightly by 0.3%, totaling 278,100, the highest number ever recorded in a single year. The number of PCT applications in India (+25.4%) and South Korea (+6.2%) has sharply increased.
【Top 5 countries for PCT applications】
The top five countries of PCT applications are China (70,015, a year-on-year increase of 0.6%), the United States (59,056, a year-on-year decrease of 0.6%), Japan (50,345, a year-on-year increase of 0.1%), South Korea (22,012, a year-on-year increase of 6.2%) and Germany (17,530, a year-on-year increase of 1.5%).
In 2022, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd remained the top applicant for six consecutive years with 7,689 published PCT applications, followed by Samsung Electronics from South Korea, Qualcomm from the United States, Mitsubishi Electric Co., Ltd. from Japan and Ericsson from Sweden. Many Chinese applicants recorded rapid growth in PCT filings, especially BEIJING XIAOMI MOBILE SOFTWARE CO., LTD. and CHANGXIN MEMORY TECHNOLOGY, INC, both moving up 27 and 53 positions from 2021, respectively.
Among the top 10 educational institutions, there are three universities from China, namely Zhejiang University (309), Suzhou University (306), and Tsinghua University (174).
Note: The table shows the number of published PCT applications.