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.

Such growth reflects the state of dynamic innovation in China and Chinese companies utilizing the IP system to protect their inventions, Aidan Kendrick, Chief Business Analyst of EPO told the Global Times on Monday.

In other technology fields, China also recorded growth of 44.3 percent in biotechnology, and 39.9 percent growth in organic fine chemistry, the latter being the strongest growth of all major patent filing countries in this field. 

So we interpret this as this part of a long term dynamic development, which is reflecting that technological specialization is itself evolving, Kendrick added. 

In the overall company ranking, Huawei was also the largest patent applicant at the EPO in 2022, ahead of LG and Qualcomm. In the computer technology field, Huawei secured first place at the EPO among all companies globally, and second in the digital communication sector, behind Qualcomm. 

In 2022 there were nine Chinese companies figuring among the 50 largest patent applicants at the EPO (up from three in 2017), confirming that the patent portfolio of technologies coming from China is broadening, the report said.