CHINA accounted for nearly half of global patent filings last year, with a record 1.54 million applications, led by telecom and computer technology, the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said yesterday.

China’s share, up 11.6 percent from 2017, included requests received by China’s intellectual property office from foreign innovators and companies seeking patent protection in the country, representing one in 10 filings, it said.

The United States ranked a distant second, with nearly 600,000 patent applications, down 1.6 percent on the previous year and the first drop in a decade, WIPO said in a report.

In all, innovators worldwide filed 3.3 million patent applications, 14.3 million trademark applications, and 1.3 million industrial design applications, with Asia accounting for more than two-thirds.

China ranked first in all three categories and had as many patent filings as the next 10 places combined, including Japan (third), South Korea (fourth) and the European Patent Office (fifth).

Asia is “increasingly the global hub for international property applications,” WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry said, noting “impressive increases” in India.

“China has been a major driving force and the volume of applications coming out of China or going into China, the volume of applications in the Chinese office is really quite extraordinary,” he told a news conference.

China and the United States are locked in a trade dispute over U.S. demands that China improve protections of American intellectual property, among others.

The United States remains first globally in seeking foreign protection for applications originating with American enterprises or individuals, Gurry said.

U.S.-based applicants filed some 230,000 patent filings overseas last year, signaling a push to expand markets against 66,400 applications from China filed abroad, he said.

(SD-Agencies)