The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) recently released its Yearly Review 2023 report, giving a detailed report and statistics on global patents over the last year.

In 2022, the PCT had 157 member states and applicants from 134 countries filed PCT applications at 85 receiving offices (ROs). However, despite such a widespread geographical distribution, filing activity was heavily concentrated in a select number of economies.

Combined, the top 10 ROs accounted for 93.8 percent of applications filed in 2022. With 74,420 filings, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) received the most PCT applications. It was followed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (55,330), the Japan Patent Office (48,826), the European Patent Office (38,854), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (21,964) and the International Bureau of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (13,713).

The PCT is an international patent treaty that provides a unified procedure for filing and processing patent applications and facilitates the seeking of patent protection for inventions in multiple countries. The PCT System is administered by the WIPO. With its wide adoption, the system is now an important tool for inventors, companies, universities and research institutions to protect their innovations internationally.

The first PCT application was filed on June 1, 1978. Since then, the PCT has expanded from 20 member states to today's global system covering over 80 percent of all countries. The origins of PCT applications also continued to expand. Applicants from 134 countries filed at least one PCT application in 2022, which is the widest spread of origins within any single year.

Even though PCT applications are received from all over the world, most of the applications are submitted by just a few countries, which are mostly the world's largest economies. Almost three quarters (73 percent) of the 4.82 million PCT applications filed since 1978 were filed by applicants residing in China, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States. Their combined share has trended upward over time, growing from around 67 percent in 2000 to 79 percent in 2022.

During the period from 2002 to 2022, filings from Asia grew constantly and sharply, by averaging 10.7 percent per year. Most of this increase in filings originated from China (52.2 percent). China has become the leading country contributing to the growth of patents in Asia.

Approximately 278,100 PCT applications were filed worldwide in 2022. Of those, Asia was the origin of 54.7 percent and of those, 93.6 percent originated from China, Japan and the Republic of Korea. Together with India, Israel, Türkiye and Singapore, these seven countries accounted for 99 percent of filings from Asia in 2022.

According to the PCT Yearly Review 2023, since 2019, China has remained the world's top filer of patent applications. It is obvious that China is on its way to becoming a major global power for innovation. This is because China strongly believes that technology innovation is the driving force behind the upgrading of traditional industries to seize opportunities in the new global wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation.

According to the government work report delivered by Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the Second Session of the 14th National People's Congress, China's top legislature, on March 5 this year, China will continue to give priority to supporting innovation in science and technology. The country has vowed to strive to modernize the industrial system and develop new quality productive forces at a faster pace. And innovation will play a leading role to this end.

To meet this goal, the Chinese Government has announced a budget of around 370.8 billion yuan ($51.24 billion) for 2024 for supporting science and technology innovation, a year-on-year increase of 10 percent. It is predicted that China will become a leading country in science and technology in the near future, which will transform the landscape of the global development. 

The author is director of BRISL, an independent and pioneering Sri Lanka-led organization with strong expertise in Belt and Road Initiative advice and support. This article was first published on the China Focus website

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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