Patent Applications from Chinese Firms Lodged with European Patent Office Grows by 15.1%: Report
Chinese companies and inventors filed 19,041 patent applications at the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2022, an increase of 15.1 percent compared to 2021. China is now among the top five countries with the most patent applications for 2022 accounting for a 9.8 percent of the share of total applications at the EPO, according to EPO's Patent Index 2022 released on Tuesday.
The patent filings from China have more than doubled over the past five years and are nearly five times the level of a decade ago.
Most inventions for which Chinese companies filed patent applications in 2022 were surrounding digital communication and computer technology.
The technical field with the steepest growth, however, was semiconductors, recording an increase of 53.6%, moving China into second position at the EPO after the US in the sector.
Patent filings from Chinese firms in the field of electrical machinery, apparatus, and energy saw a sharp increase of 47.4 percent compared with the previous year, exceeding the growth from Japan and the US.