China's patent filings under WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) soared last year, becoming the world's fourth prolific filer of PCT applications, said WIPO in Geneva on February 9. According to a statistics issued by WIPO, the PCT applications filed by China soared from 7,900 in 2009 to 12,339 last year, up 56.2%.

Two Chinese companies made the top users list. ZTE climbed to the second from the twentieth in 2009 with 1,863 PCT applications, while Huawei secured the fourth with 1,528 filings. As always, no Chinese university charged into the top 50 university applicants. There were totally 30 U.S. universities on the list with their flings ranging from 30 to 306.

The top four PCT countries in 2010 are U.S. (44,855), Japan (32,156), Germany (17,171) and China , according to the statistics published by WIPO.

(China IP News)