Global patent applications hit the new high in 2021

According to the United Nations, a record number of international patents were submitted last year, demonstrating that the epidemic had not hindered innovation. Despite the massive human and economic toll of Covid-19, foreign patent applications continued to rise, with Asia, and particularly China, maintaining their leading positions.

According to the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organisation’s annual review, a record 277,500 worldwide patents were submitted in 2021, up 0.9 percent from 2020. International patent filings increased for the 12th year in a row.

The WIPO’s complex system for registering international patents consists of many different categories, including global trademarks and design filing systems.

Leading positions of China

China stayed at the top of the rankings in the main category, the Patent Cooperation Treaty, or PCT, with 69,540 filings. This is only a 0.9 percent rise from 2020. China, on the other hand, had a 16 percent increase over 2019, when it overtook the United States as the world’s top foreign patent filer for the first time.

With 59,570 filings in 2021, the United States remained in second position, followed by Japan with 50,260, South Korea with 20,678, and Germany with 17,322. The UN agency also saw a considerable increase in applications from a number of smaller filers.

Singapore, for example, saw a 23 percent increase in international patent applications to 1,617, while Finland and Turkey both recorded increases of over 13 percent. Asia-based applicants accounted for 54.1 percent of all applications last year, up from 38.5 percent a decade before, according to the WIPO study.

Huawei Technologies, a Chinese telecoms company, led the worldwide leaderboard for the fifth year in a row in 2021, with 6,952 PCT applications. In 2021, the corporation filed for more international patents than all of the filings outside of the Britain combined.

Qualcomm Inc. of the United States came next at 3,931, followed by Samsung Electronics of South Korea at 3,041 and LG Electronics of South Korea at 2,855, and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. of Japan at 2,673. Computer technology was the most typical type of PCT application, accounting for 9.9% of all applications, followed by digital communication and medical technology.

The pharmaceutical industry saw the greatest increase in filings, with a 12.8 percent increase, followed by biotechnology, which saw a 9.5 percent increase. Patents often take 18 months to be published after they are submitted, indicating that the official 2021 data may not fully represent pandemic-driven technology trends.