GENEVA: A record variety of worldwide patents had been filed final yr, indicating that innovation had not been stymied by the pandemic, the United Nations mentioned Thursday.

At the same time as COVID-19 took an unlimited human and financial toll, worldwide patent purposes continued to develop, with Asia, and China in explicit, cementing their main positions.

A record 277,500 worldwide patents had been filed in 2021, marking a 0.9% improve from 2020, the UN’s World Mental Property Organisation mentioned in its annual overview.

“These figures show that human ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit remain strong despite the disruptions caused by the pandemic.” WIPO Director-Common Daren Tang mentioned in a press release.

Final yr marked the twelfth consecutive yr of development in worldwide patent filings.

WIPO’s chief economist Carsten Fink highlighted how outstanding it was that “international patent filings continued to grow in 2020 and 2021 as the global pandemic unfolded and upended economies around the world.”

“This experience is notably different compared to previous economic crises,” he instructed reporters, pointing to how worldwide patent filings fell in the course of the world monetary disaster in 2009.

WIPO’s complicated system of registering worldwide patents entails a number of classes, together with world logos and design submitting programs.

China on high

In the principle class — the Patent Cooperation Treaty, or PCT — China remained on the high of the rankings with 69,540 filings.

That marks a mere 0.95 improve over 2020.

However a yr earlier, China registered a 16% leap over 2019, when it for the primary time overtook america because the world’s high worldwide patent filer.

America remained in second place in 2021, with 59,570 filings, adopted by Japan with 50,260, South Korea with 20,678 and Germany with 17,322.

The UN company highlighted vital development in purposes by a number of smaller filers as properly.

Singapore, for example, noticed its worldwide patent purposes swell by 23% to 1,617, whereas Finland and Turkey every noticed jumps of over 13%.

WIPO’s report confirmed that Asia-based candidates accounted for 54.1% of all filings final yr, up from 38.5% a decade earlier.

For the fifth consecutive yr, China-based telecoms big Huawei Applied sciences topped the worldwide rating in 2021, with 6,952 PCT purposes.

The corporate thus utilized for extra worldwide patents than all of the filings out of Britain in 2021, Fink identified.

It was adopted by US agency Qualcomm Inc at 3,931; South Korea’s Samsung Electronics at 3,041 and LG Electronics at 2,855; and Mitsubishi Electrical Corp of Japan at 2,673.

Pc know-how accounted for the most important share of printed PCT purposes, making up 9.9% of the whole, adopted by digital communication and medical know-how.

The pharmaceutical area recorded the strongest development fee for filings, seeing a 12.8% leap, adopted by biotechnology, which was up 9.5%.

Fink identified that it takes round 18 months for patents to be printed after they’re filed, warning that the official 2021 figures won’t but utterly replicate pandemic-fuelled know-how tendencies.

Nonetheless, he mentioned, “we have definitely seen greater dynamism in the health-related technology fields.”