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European IP Attorneys

Actualité

10 March 2021

International patent applications: breaking records in 2020!

The WIPO just released their 2020 statistics: despite the heavy impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, the number of international patent applications filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) increased by 4% compared to 2019! 275 900 applications were filed in 2020, when 265 381 were filed in 2019: it is also the highest recorded number, despite the estimated 3,5 % decrease in the global GDP.

China remains the country that filed the most international patent applications (68 720 applications, + 16,1 % annual growth), followed by the USA (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 %).

In addition to these countries that are usually at the top of the rankings, others have shown a strong growth of their number of international patent applications. It is for example the case of Saudi Arabia with 956 filed applications, an impressive + 73,2 % growth compared to 2019 ; it is also the case of Malaysia with 255 filed applications (+ 26,2 % annual growth) or Chile (262 applications, + 17 % growth). All these different statistics clearly show the tendency of the globalisation of innovation.