As communicated by WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), innovative enterprises and individuals around the world overcame the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. In particular, the international patent applications filed via WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), a widely used metric for measuring innovative activity, grew by 0.9% in 2021 to reach 277,500 applications. Asia manifested its lead as the largest origin of international patent applications, accounting for 54.1% of all applications in 2021, up from 38.5% in 2011. China (69,540 applications, +0.9% year-on-year growth) remained the largest user of the PCT in 2021. This was followed by the U.S. (59,570 applications, +1.9%), Japan (50,260 applications, -0.6%), the Republic of Korea (20,678 applications, +3.2%) and Germany (17,322 applications, -6.4%). Beyond the top 10, Singapore (1,617 applications, +23%), Finland (1,907 applications, +13.8%) and Turkey (1,829 applications, +13.2%) each saw strong growth in PCT filings in 2021.
China-based telecoms giant Huawei Technologies, with 6,952 published PCT applications, was the top filer in 2021. It was followed by Qualcomm Inc. of the U.S. (3,931), Samsung Electronics of the Republic of Korea (3,041), LG Electronics Inc. of the Republic of Korea (2,885) and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. of Japan (2,673).
