Innovation Race: China’s Patent Growth Exceeds That of the U.S. The Rising of Huawei

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization‘s (WIPO) most recent report, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Huawei were the top three foreign patent filers in 2023. In this battle for innovation, Chinese businesses have notably overtaken their peers from South Korea and the United States. The U.S. sanctions posed significant obstacles, but Huawei persevered in maintaining its leadership position by filing the most patents worldwide.

China has clearly established itself as a dominant force in the intellectual property space, surpassing all other nations in the total number of patent submissions. The total amount of foreign patent applications decreased marginally to 272,600 in 2023, but China continued to lead the field with 69,610 applications—far more than the United States.

Through its Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system, which allows organizations to seek protection for their ideas across many countries with a single application, the WIPO measures the number of patent applications. Although the WIPO rankings provide insightful information, they could not include all patent applications filed globally.

With 6,494 published PCT applications, Huawei Technologies maintained its position as the top filer among corporate submissions. Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm came in second and third, with 3,924 and 3,410 applications, respectively. This dominance is seen throughout the whole Top 50, which is made up primarily of high-tech businesses with software, hardware, and telecom development as their areas of expertise.

Conversely, prominent entities such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are conspicuously absent from the upper echelons. It’s interesting to note that, when it comes to patent filings, unknown companies like Oppo and Vivo outpaced major players in the market like Apple and Microsoft. This shows how innovation is constantly changing.

China continued to lead the country in PCT patent applications with 69,610, despite a little decline from the year before. With 55,678 applications, the United States trailed behind and saw a more significant decrease. Significant contributors to the increase in patent applications are the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, Turkey, India, and France.

Computer technology, telecommunications, electrical machinery, pharmaceuticals, and medical technology are the industries that drive patent applications. Giants in the industry including Huawei, Qualcomm, Samsung, Ericsson, and Nokia filed a large number of telco-related patents among these, especially in the areas of 5G and Wi-Fi technologies.

In spite of obstacles like rising interest rates and unpredictability in the economy, innovation activity appears to be on the rise going forward. Promising potential for innovation investments can be found in regions such as India and Southeast Asia, which mirror a wider trend of increasing usage of intellectual property in a digitalized, global economy.