Chinese telecoms giant Huawei filed more patents applications than any other company in the world last year, according to new stats from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
The company has kept its dominance as the top corporate filer with a record number of 5,405 international patent filings to the U.N. body in 2018, up from 4,024 in 2017.
The number of patent filings by Huawei is almost as twice as many as Mitsubishi Electric of Japan filed last year, which came in at 2,812. Intel ranked third with 2,499 filings, followed by Qualcomm (2,404) and ZTE (2,080). ZTE, which was the top applicant in 2016, saw a nearly 30 percent drop in the number of published patent filings last year.
In total, applicants from China filed 53,345 patent applications to the WIPO, the second largest number in 2018, following U.S.-based applicants that made 56,142 applications. The WIPO expects that China will surpass the U.S. within the next two years if current trends hold.
Over half of patent applications filed last year came from Asia, noted the WIPO.
"Asia is now the majority filer of international patent applications via WIPO, which is an important milestone for that economically dynamic region and underscores the historical geographical shift of innovative activity from West to East," said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry.
