According to the information from WIPO, the total number of PCT applications throughout the world

In 2008 made a historic high record. China ranked the sixth for a total number of 6089 PCT applications in 2008.

In terms of PCT applications, the USA ranked the first for 53521 applications, Japan the second for 28774 applications and Germany the third for 18428 applications.

Korea and China were the top two developing countries in terms of PCT applications in 2008 and they were followed by India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Mexico and Malaysia. The sharp increase of PCT applications filed by Chinese and Korean applicants has not only reflected the continuous improvement of their capacity of innovation and the sense of intellectual property protection, but also shown their important contributions for accelerating the progress of world intellectual property reform.

The State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) began to accept PCT-ASFE applications on May 1, 2007. The total number of PCT-SAFE applications filed with the SIPO in 2008 was 4096, accounting for 67% of the total applications. The utilization of PCT-SAFE has provided the applicants with standard model for preparing application text and offered great convenience to the applicants in the reduction of costs and the filing of documents.

As to the PCT-based Chinese applications, the SIPO as both designated and elected office had received 57,421 PCT applications for entry into the Chinese national phase in 2008, an increase of 3701 over the previous year.

The huge potential of the Chinese market has been attracting the attention of more and more multinational companies. At the same time, a number of Chinese high-tech companies like Huawei and Zhongxing have demonstrated their excellent capacity of innovation by filing quite a number of PCT applications. Of the world ranking, these two Chinese companies took the first and 38th places in 2008.

Over the past few years, the total number of China’s PCT applications has been increasing rapidly, reflecting China’s great innovative capacity in science and technology and the important contributions of intellectual property system to the development of science and technology.