“Innovation remains resilient,” WIPO chief Daren Tang said.

China’s intellectual property agency reports fall in patent applications after quality drive

However, he stressed that the filings in 2020 mainly reflected innovations and inventions made before the pandemic, as it takes about a year for applications to make their ways through the system.

But the growth in patent filings should still be seen as a positive signal, according to WIPO.

“The fact that there wasn’t a sharp cutback in international patenting suggests that companies continued to invest in the commercialisation of their technologies during the pandemic,” its chief economist Carsten Fink said.

By comparison, international patent filings plunged nearly 5 per cent during the global financial crisis in 2009, he said.

WIPO’s complex system of registering international patents involves multiple categories.

In the main category – the Patent Cooperation Treaty, or PCT – China remained at the top of the ranking with 68,720 filings.

That marked a jump of more than 16 per cent from 2019, when China passed the United States.

At that point, it was ahead by just over 1,000 applications but it has now expanded its lead to nearly 10,000.

In 2000, China made just 782 international patent filings.

“The growth rate in international patent applications from China has been very high,” Fink said.

The United States meanwhile also increased its international filings, by 3 per cent, to 59,230.

China and the United States were followed by Japan, South Korea and Germany as the world’s top patent filers, WIPO said.

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The United Nations agency highlighted significant growth in applications by several smaller filers as well.

Saudi Arabia, for instance, saw its international patent applications balloon last year by over 73 per cent to 956, while Malaysia, Chile, Singapore and Brazil also made big advances.

WIPO’s report showed Asian-based applicants accounted for almost 54 per cent of all filings, up from 36 per cent a decade ago.

It was followed by Samsung Electronics of South Korea (3,093), Misubishi Electric of Japan (2,810) South Korea’s LG Electronics (2,759) and Qualcomm of the United States (2,173).

Computer technology accounted for the largest share of published PCT applications, with more than 9 per cent of the total, followed by digital communications and medical technology.

That was not necessarily linked to the Covid-19 influenced realities of 2020, Fink said, adding that the 2021 filings should provide more insight into pandemic-fuelled technology trends.

“These patents relate to pre-pandemic innovations so this is not a story about how the crisis has affected the direction of innovation,” he said.