Nearly half of global patent filings from China: UN

The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said on Wednesday that with a record 1.54 million applications (led by telecoms and computer technology), China accounted for nearly half of global patent filings last year. Improving its performance from 11.6% in 2017,China ranked first in all three categories and had as many patent filings as the next 10 places combined, including Japan (3rd), South Korea (4th) and the European Patent Office (5th). With nearly 600,000 patent applications, down 1.6% on the previous year and the first drop in a decade, US secured the second rank.