The statistics newly released by WIPO showed that the PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) international patent applications in 2013 amounted to a record high of 205,300, with an increase of 5.1% compared with that of 2012. It was also released that China filed 21, 516 PCT international patent applications, ranking the third place after the US (57,239) and Japan (43,918), and surpassing Germany (17,927) for the first time.
In terms of companies filing the PCT applications, Panasonic in Japan filed the most, with a total number of 2,881. ZTE and Huawei, China's telecommunication companies who filed 2,309 and 2,094 PCT applications respectively, ranked the second and third place.
The Chinese official said that apart from the internationalization of market penetration, the patent funding policy of Chinese government highly motivated the PCT international applications of the enterprises.
