The US government believes Huawei is too close to the Chinese government and therefore might cause security breaches and data theft but the company on the other way despite it’s continuous rise to popularity has stated repeatedly that it’s rise is hinged on the huge investment in R&D even though that might not be convincing to everyone.
But based on a performance report published in 2019 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), this might show the answer to that sudden success of the Chinese tech giant. According to the report which was released on Tuesday showed the company had filed some 4,411 patents under the international patents system (PCT) which therefore makes Huawei one of the top global corporate filer.
Another big revelation made by the WIPO showed that China had surpassed the US in 2019 as top source of International patent applications filled with the WIPO.
Applications from China filed using WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) System reached 58,990. On the other hand, the US filed 57,840 applications in the same period. This makes China the biggest user of the PCT System that helps incentivize and spread innovation.
This position is said to have held on by the US for over 40 years since the PCT began operation back in the year 1978. In contrast, it wasn’t until the year 1999 did WIPO received just 276 patent applications from China but then this went above the roof in 2019 with about 58,900 applications filed which is a massive increase in 20 years.
Aside Huawei, other corporate patent filers includes Mitsubishi Electric Corp of Japan which had a total of 2,661 patents. The third position is held by Samsung Electronics with some 2,334 patents while Qualcomm took the forth place with 2,127 patent applications and next to it is Oppo Mobile which had filed some 1,927 patent applications.
To further break it down into categories, the top 10 applicants comprises of four Chinese companies, two South Korean companies and only from Japan and Germany, Sweden and then the United States.
Of the top 10 applicants, six filed mainly in digital communication, namely, Ericsson, Oppo, Huawei Technologies, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm.
According to Francis Gurry, who is also WIPO’s Director General made it known in a video broadcast where he stated that “2019 was the year that was.… Last year was the best year we have experienced in the course of the past decade. In fact, it was the best year we have experienced in the history of the Organization”.
“China’s rapid growth to become the top filer of international patent applications via WIPO underlines a long-term shift in the locus of innovation towards the East, with Asia-based applicants now accounting for more than half of all PCT applications”, the WIPO director added.