“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.”
---- WIPO Director General Francis Gurry.
The United States in 2018 contributed the highest number of PCT filings at 56,142, followed by China at 53,345 and Japan at 49,702. For the first time filers in Asia contributed more than half (50.5 percent) of all international patent applications, then Europe (24.5 percent) and North America (23.1 percent).
Note: PCT data are based on publication date.
China-based telecoms giant Huawei Technologies, with a record number of 5,405 published PCT applications, was the top corporate filer in 2018, which is "an all-time record by anyone," according to Gurry.
ZTE was the top applicant in 2016 but saw a 29.8 percent drop in the number of published PCT filings in 2018, its second straight year of declines.
The top 10 applicant list in 2018 comprises six companies from Asia, two from Europe and two from the U.S.
BOE Technology Group ranked the 7th with 1,813 PCT filings, becoming the third Chinese company in the top 10 applicants; OPPO saw a rise from 474 in 2017 to 1,042 in 2018, and jumped 23 places in the ranking to become the 17th. Tencent, DJI, CSOT also headed the list of top 50.
Source: http://www.iprchn.com/cipnews/news_content.aspx?newsId=115054 http://www.sdclaim.com/NewsDetail.aspx?id=1736