The World Intellectual Property Indicators 2017, released by the World Intellectual Property Organization on Dec 6, found that China leads in innovation by quantity.
As shown by WIPI, China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) received the highest number of patent applications, a record total of 1.3 million, more patent applications than the combined total for the United States of America, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the European Patent Office (EPO)
The world's total number of international applications via the Patent Cooperation Treaty grew by 7.2 percent to about 233,000 in 2016 - the fastest increase since 2011 and the seventh consecutive year of growth. China ranked No 3 among PCT filers worldwide in 2016, after the US and Japan.
In the field of trademarks, yearly applications increased by 16.4 percent to about 7 million in 2016 globally, marking the seventh consecutive year of growth. With roughly 3.7 million applications, China continued to become the largest trademark filer last year, followed by the US and Japan.
With a surge of 94.7 percent, the country was pushed up from eighth largest origin in 2015 to fourth largest filer of Madrid international applications in 2016.
Worldwide industrial design applications grew by 10.4 percent to almost 1 million in 2016, more than half of them from China.
About 16,510 plant variety applications were filed worldwide in 2016, a rise of 8.3 percent from 2015 - the largest increase in annual filings in 15 years. China ranked No 2 with more than 2,900 filings, after the Community Plant Variety Office of the European Union.
http://english.sipo.gov.cn/news/iprspecial/201712/t20171214_1321239.html
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