According to the statistics newly released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) China ranked the first place in terms of both patent and trademark applications in 2013.
Of all 2,570, 000 patent applications filed worldwide in 2013, 820, 000 are from China, ranking the first place with a percentage of 32.1% of the total. After China are the United States with about 570, 000 filings and 22.3% of the total, Japan with 328,000 filings and 12.8% of the total.
In terms of technical areas, computer technology accounted for the major proportion of 7.6% of the total, followed by electrical machinery, measurement equipment, digital communications and medical technology. As far as countries are concerned, pharmaceutical patent applications were mainly from Switzerland and most food chemistry patent applications were from Russia. The applications filed by France and Germany were mainly for transportation, while those filed by China, South Korea, the US and the UK were largely related to computer technologies.
With regard to trademarks, China also ranked first with 1.88 million in total, followed by the United States with 480,000 and the EU with320, 000. It’s noted that in the past decade trademarks for services remain the main category in trademark applications, such as advertising, business management and application management etc., followed by clothing, scientific goods and goods related to photography, measurement instruments, recording equipment and computer and software etc.
