The European Patent Office (EPO) has released a patent ranking for 2019. The data released show that the officed received a total of over 181,000 patent applications in 2019. The figure represented an increase of 4% over 2018. Among them, Chinese patent applications increased by 29.2% to 12,247, ranking fourth. The United States, Germany, and Japan make up the top three.
In terms of individual brands, Huawei ranked first among all brands with a total of 3524 patent applications. Samsung and LG ranked second and third with 2,858 and 2817 patents respectively.
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In January this year, the State Intellectual Property Office released data saying that in 2019, the number of Chinese invention patent applications was 14.01 million. Out of that massive figure, only 453,000 invention patents were approved. The data also showed that the number of invention patents granted in China in 2019 increased by 4.8% year-on-year, and the number of registered trademarks increased by 27.9% year-on-year.
Also in 2019, the top three domestic companies (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) in terms of patent approvals were: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (4510 patents), China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (2883 patents), OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. (2614 patents).
Huawei’s rise to the top is hinged on the company’s huge investment in R&D which is reflected in the number of patent applications. The company was reported to have spent $15.3 billion on R&D in 2018. That may have increased by last year but we can’t say if the Chinese giant will whittle down its investments this year in the face of political pressure from the US and the raging Coronavirus epidemic that
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