China leads in international patent applications

China filed the most applications for international patents in 2020. The People’s Republic thus outstripped the United States for the second year in a row, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced yesterday. According to the report, 68,720 patent applications were filed from China last year through the organization’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) – compared with 59,230 applications from the United States. According to WIPO, the number of patent applications filed from Germany fell by 3.7 percent last year: 18,643 patent applications reached the organization from the Federal Republic.