China's number of applications in Europe hit a new high in 2020, with Huawei, OPPO and Xiaomi at the top

Jiwei.com reported that according to Xinhua News Agency and CCTV, data released recently by the European Patent Office showed that in 2020, a total of 13,432 patent applications were received from China, a year-on-year increase of 9.9%. The number of Chinese patent applications to the European Patent Office hit a record high.

It is reported that the growth rate of the number of applications filed by Chinese companies at the European Patent Office in 2020 was the highest among the 10 major patent application countries. Except for the strong growth of patent applications in South Korea, the number of patent applications in most other technologically advanced regions has declined: the number of applications filed by US companies has decreased by 4.1% compared with 2019, while the number of patent applications in Europe has decreased by 1.3% compared with the previous year, and the number of patent applications in Japan has decreased by 1.1%.

The report said that the top three technology fields with the most patent applications from Chinese companies are digital communications (accounting for 26.5% of all patent applications from all countries in the European Patent Office in this field), computer technology (accounting for 11.6%) and "electrical machinery, instruments, and energy" (accounting for 9.1%). Among them, Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, BOE, and ZTE are at the top of the company rankings.

The 2020 European Patent Index pointed out that the European Patent Office received a total of 180,250 patent applications in 2020, which was a 0.7% decrease from last year due to the epidemic. In terms of absolute numbers, the United States still has an advantage, accounting for 25% of the total number of applications, followed by Germany and Japan. China ranked fifth, accounting for 7% of the total number of applications.