China the global leader in patent filings in 2018 as its inventors seek to double down on call for self-reliance

China’s intellectual property office received a record number of 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, making it the biggest filer and accounting for 46.4 per cent of total patent filings globally as the country pushes ahead with a self-reliance drive in core technology.

Patent filing activity in China grew by 11.6 per cent last year and its number of filings was roughly equal to the combined total of countries ranked two through 11, as the country seeks to fend off US pressure over trade and tech.

The US came in second with 597,141 filings, followed by Japan (313,567), South Korea (209,992) and the European Patent Office (174,397), according to a report published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on Wednesday.

“China has been the main driver of global growth in IP filings in recent years and it was once again the main source of growth in worldwide IP filings in 2018,” said Francis Gurry, Director General of WIPO. “The volumes of applications in China are quite exceptional.”

However, Gurry highlighted that the US was still the country seeking the most amount of foreign protection of intellectual property developed by US individuals and companies. US applicants filed around 230,000 patent applications overseas, more than three times the number for China.

China has three types of patent: invention, utility model and design. There were 1.39 million domestic invention patent applications in 2018, making up about 90 per cent of total patents filed last year, according to an annual report published by China's National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) in May.