China grants 530,000 patents

In 2020 alone, China licensed 530,000 patents, or 15.8 patents per 10,000 people.
China is currently ranked 14th in the Global Innovation Index 2020 ranking and is the number 1 economy among middle-income economies globally. China is also emerging as a major global contributor to patents as it makes strides in strengthening research and development and strengthening intellectual property rights protection.

The country also vowed to make more efforts to promote the shift from pursuing quantity to improving quality in intellectual property work in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25). Mark Snyder, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the US chip corporation Qualcomm, said that China has made remarkable achievements in strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights. In recent years, the National Intellectual Property Office of China reviews more than 1 million patent applications each year and issues more than 500,000 of them. This is also the highest number in the world. “The large number of intellectual property filings and cases handled by both the administrative authorities and the intellectual property courts in China is concrete evidence of society’s confidence in the effectiveness of the government’s policies. policies and reform measures taken by the Chinese government on intellectual property. These achievements are also evidence of an unprecedented accumulation of specialized knowledge and experience in the field of intellectual property.” Mark Snyder said. China is also the global leader in the number of international patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system. In 2020, China is the country using this system the most, with nearly 69,000 applications. By filing an international patent application under the PCT, an applicant can claim protection for inventions in a large number of countries. Illustration Specifically, 3 Chinese companies have entered the list of top 10 patent filing companies at PCT. Huawei Technologies Co topped the list, while Chinese display maker BOE Technology Group Co and smartphone maker Oppo ranked seventh and eighth respectively. Jason Ding, head of Huawei’s IPR division, said the company has become one of the world’s largest patent holders thanks to its investment in innovation. By the end of 2020, Huawei held more than 100,000 active patents worldwide. The latest report from German patent analysis firm IPlytics shows that Huawei accounts for 15.39% of global 5G patents or a collection of patent applications that include the same technical content or similarly, as of February 1, this is the highest number in the world. Chinese telecommunications equipment maker ZTE ranked 3rd with 9.81% and Oppo ranked 9th with 3.47%. Feng Ying, Oppo’s Senior Director of Intellectual Property, said that the company will invest more resources in R&D through innovation. Such advancements will certainly impact the overall economic landscape in China. Official data shows that the number of invention patents in China reached a ratio of 15.8 per 10,000 people by the end of 2020, exceeding the target set for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020). Shen Changyu, head of the National Intellectual Property Administration of China, said that China will further improve the funding and reward policies for patents, and protect and encourage patents. high value institution during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. According to data released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in March 2021, Chinese universities have risen significantly in global rankings of patent applications. In 2020, there were 9/20 top Chinese educational institutions on the WIPO list, an increase of 6 since 2017, extending China’s lead over the US in the number of applications. patent signing. In particular, Shenzhen University, a school only 38 years old but filed the third highest number of international patents in the world in 2020, just behind the University of California and Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT). WIPO data also shows that the institution’s 252 patent applications are more than Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University combined. Chinese schools and businesses are working to file more international patents as part of the world’s second economy’s ambitions to achieve technological innovation and self-reliance in the face of stress. increasingly direct from the West.