Are you still wondering how Huawei suddenly became a force to reckon with in the tech sector? The company has stated repeatedly that its rise is hinged on the huge investment in R&D but some are still unconvinced. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) performance report for 2019 may well provide a definitive answer. The report which was released today showed that Huawei filed a total of 4,411 patents under the international patent system (also called Patent Cooperation Treaty – PCT). This makes Huawei the top corporate filer globally.

The WIPO report also revealed another sensational news, and that is the performance of China. According to WIPO, China surpassed the United States of America (U.S.) in 2019 as the top source of international patent applications filed with WIPO. Applications from China filed using WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) System reached 58,990. On the other hand, the US filed 57,840 applications in the same period. This makes China the biggest user of the PCT System that helps incentivize and spread innovation.

It is worthy of note that the US had held this position each year for the past 41 years, which is since the PCT began operations in 1978. For comparison, as of 1999, WIPO received just 276 patent applications from China. But in 2019, the number of Chinese patent applications had risen to 58,990. That is a 200-fold increase in only twenty years.

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Back to the corporate patent segment, leader Huawei is followed by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. of Japan with a total of 2,661 patents. In the third position is Samsung Electronics with 2,334 patents. Qualcomm is ranked fourth with 2,127 patent applications while Oppo Mobile occupies the fifth place with 1,927 patent filings. In summary, the top 10 applicant list comprises four companies from China, two from the Republic of Korea, and one each from Germany, Japan, Sweden and the U.S. Of the top 10 applicants, six filed mainly in digital communication, namely, Ericsson, Oppo, Huawei Technologies, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm.

WIPO’s Director General Francis Gurry in his video broadcast stated, “2019 was the year that was.… Last year was the best year we have experienced in the course of the past decade. In fact, it was the best year we have experienced in the history of the Organization”.

“China’s rapid growth to become the top filer of international patent applications via WIPO underlines a long-term shift in the locus of innovation towards the East, with Asia-based applicants now accounting for more than half of all PCT applications”, the WIPO director added.

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