European filings surge on rising global reach

The number of patent applications from China in Europe showed a "spectacular rise" of 18.2 percent last year, said a report released by the European Patent Office on Feb 26 in Brussels.

Patent applications to the EPO from the Chinese mainland totaled 26,472 last year, the fourth-highest number by country, while the United States topped the list with 71,745 of the total 274,000 applications, followed by Japan and Germany.

Growth in filings from the Chinese mainland was the highest among the top 10 countries and regions of origin, said the report.

There were also 987 patent filings from Taiwan, 16 from Hong Kong and three from Macao.

The surging number of applications from China "represents an increase in not only patent awareness, but also R&D investment by Chinese companies", Jia Jun, chief analyst at patent research and management firm PatSnap, told China Daily.

The 38 member states of the European Patent Organization "consolidated their share" of 35 percent of the total filings, according to the report. Their strength in innovation and technology is also highlighted by the number of patent applications relative to population.

Switzerland headed the per capita ranking with 848 applications per million inhabitants, followed by Finland with 416 and the Netherlands with 406. The top non-European country was Japan in ninth place with 173 filings per million population.

"Demand for patent protection in Europe has been growing steadily, and is up for the fifth year in a row," said EPO President Benoit Battistelli as he presented the results.

"Europe continues to strengthen its key role as a global hub of technology and innovation for a growing number of companies from around the world.

"The rise in patent filings originating from Europe underlines the importance of patent-intensive industries as a solid base for the European knowledge economy: they foster Europe's competitiveness, economic strength and employment," said Battistelli.

The EPO also found that the share of international filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty has "increased significantly" over the past five years. In 2014, only 60,000 applications were direct European filings at a time when there were 214,000 international filings to the PCT.

South Korea's Samsung once again headed the list at the EPO with 2,541 applications in 2014.

Huawei Technologies took the lead in all Chinese companies on the list, ranking fifth with 1,600 applications, followed by ZTE, Tencent, BYD and BOE Technologies.

The top five Chinese companies are all based in Shenzhen and Beijing, where there is "the best IP environments and strongest government support in IP", Jia said.

A report in People's Daily said that China "grew fastest in the digital communications sector", accounting for 15 percent of patent applications at the EPO in the area last year. Huawei surpassed Ericsson for the first time to become the top applicant in the field. ZTE ranked seventh.

Another area with strong growth from China was computer technologies, where patent applications at the EPO increased 37 percent last year, according to China's biggest newspaper.

But more than 80 percent of the patent applications from China focus on telecommunication technologies, illustrating the unbalanced development of the country's industries, said Jia.

He added that China also lags behind advanced countries because its innovative R&D is "highly concentrated in just a few companies".

The first 20 Chinese companies on the EPO list had 2,784 applications, nearly 80 percent them filed by the top three. In contrast, the first 20 Japanese companies had 9,267 filings, but only 27 percent of them were submitted by the top three of Toyota, Sony and Panasonic. The figure is 30 percent for the US and 48 percent for Germany.

"Excessive concentration of innovation leads to narrowed R&D fields," Jia said. "In many of the world's innovation-intensive areas, such as biomedicine, precision machinery and new energy, foreign companies have taken the dominance in innovation.

"China will lose its influence in those fields if such a trend continues in the long run."

zhangzhao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/04/2015 page17)