International patent applications via WIPO in 2020 continued to grow amid the COVID-19 pandemic's vast human and economic toll, with leading users China and the U.S. each marking annual growth in filings.

International patent applications filed via WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which is one of the widely used metrics for measuring innovative activity, grew by 4% in 2020 to reach 275,900 applications – the highest number ever, despite an estimated drop in global GDP of 3.5%.

China (68,720 applications, +16.1% year-on-year growth) remained the largest user of WIPO's PCT System, followed by the U.S. (59,230 applications, +3%), Japan (50,520 applications, -4.1%), the Republic of Korea (20,060 applications, +5.2%) and Germany (18,643 applications, -3.7%)

For the fourth consecutive year, China-based telecoms giant Huawei Technologies, with 5,464 published PCT applications, was the top filer in 2020. It was followed by Samsung Electronics of the Republic of Korea (3,093), Mitsubishi Electric Corp. of Japan (2,810), LG Electronics Inc. of the Republic of Korea (2,759) and Qualcomm Inc. of the U.S. (2,173)

The University of California with 559 published applications continues to head the list of top applicants among educational institutions in 2020. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (269) ranked second, followed by Shenzhen University (252), Tsinghua University (231) and Zhejiang University (209). The top 10-university list comprises five universities from China, four from the U.S., and one from Japan.

U.S.-based applicants (10,005) filed the largest number of international trademark applications using WIPO's Madrid System in 2020, followed by those located in Germany (7,334), China (7,075), France (3,716) and the U.K. (3,679). Among the top ten origins, China (+16.4%) is the only country to record double-digit growth in 2020.

(Source: WIPO      Published on 03/09 2021)