China has passed the US and Japan to take the top spot in the world ranking of patent filers. A report from Reuters cites data from 2010 indicating that China filed 314,000 patents. No specific number is given for 2011, but Thomson Reuters study expects China to file 500,000 patent applications in 2015, compared with 400,000 filings from the US and 300,000 from Japan.
China offers financial incentives to patent filers, which has certainly helped boost the number of filings. But the return on the patents still trails the US and Japan.
About 73% of Chinese patent filings in 2010 were domestic, but international filings are increasing. In 2010, Chinese phone maker ZTE had the second-highest patent filing total in the world, trailing only Japan’s Panasonic Corp.
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