A worker checks a chip at Jade Bird Fire Co in Zhangjiakou, North China's Hebei Province, on March 27, 2022. Jade Bird makes firefighting products. Its self-developed Zhuhuan chip, which integrates fire detection capability, communication technology and integrated circuit technology, is widely used in China. Photo: VCG

 
Despite economic downturns, intellectual property (IP) filings have remained strong during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and soared in 2021, and China's long-term growth has played a major role in driving the global increase, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said.

Innovators around the world filed 3.4 million patent applications in 2021, up 3.6 percent from the previous year with WIPO's offices in Asia receiving 67.6 percent of all applications in the world, data published by the organization showed on Monday.

Strong growth in local patent filings in China, South Korea and India drove the global growth in patent applications in 2021, propelling the share of Asian filings to cross the two-thirds threshold, while local patenting activity in the US, Japan and Germany declined during the same period.

The latest data showed a "continued and sustained growth" in IP filings, "driven largely by increases in Asia, with other regions also trending mostly upward", WIPO Director General Daren Tang said.

China's IP office received 1.59 million patent applications in 2021 last year, up 5.5 percent year-on-year, which is similar in magnitude to the combined total of the next 12 offices ranked from the second to 13th, according to the WIPO.

China overtook the US in 2019 as the top source of international patent applications filed with the WIPO, and has since consolidated the leading position.

Apart from IP application, China surpassed the US to become the top jurisdiction in terms of number of patents in force in 2021 - with 3.6 million patents, followed by the US (3.3 million), Japan (2 million), and South Korea (1.2 million). China saw the fastest growth in patents in force in 2021 up by 17.6 percent.

China's stellar performance in the IP sector reflected the country's priority placed on strengthening enterprises' innovation capability and the awareness of IP protection is paying off. It is inseparable from the country's continuous investment in research and development over recent years, analysts told the Global Times. 

The Chinese mainland has climbed to the 11th place on the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2022 released by the WIPO in September, up one slot from its 2021 ranking, marking its 10th consecutive rise in the rankings.

More than 30 percent of the Chinese patents belonged to strategic emerging industries, such as new-energy vehicles, digital creativity, and high-end equipment manufacturing, Ge Shu, an official with the National Intellectual Property Administration, said in October.

Global Times