According to data released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on March 7, 2024, China filed 69,610 Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications in 2023 – a small decrease of 0.6% from the previous year. This is the first year-on-year decrease from China since 2002. The United States came in second with 55,678 applications, which represents a 5.3% drop on 2022.

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies remained by far the top filer with 6,494 published PCT applications in 2023. Samsung Electronics of the Republic of Korea came in second (3,924 applications), followed by Qualcomm of the US (3,410), Mitsubishi Electric of Japan (2,152) and BOE Technology of China (1,988). Contemporary Amperex Technology of China marked the fastest growth among the top 10 applicants, with an additional 1,533 published applications in 2023, moving up 84 positions to eighth place. In contrast, the top applicant, Huawei Technologies, had 1,195 fewer published applications in 2023 compared to the previous year.

In the education sector, the University of California (USA) remained the top applicant with 531 published PCT applications in 2023. Suzhou University (China) came in second (332 applications) followed by the University of Texas System (US, 217), Tsinghua University (China, 209) and Leland Stanford Junior University (USA, 180). Tsinghua University witnessed the sharpest increase among the top five educational institutions, with an additional 35 published PCT applications.

The announcement and full data is available here.