China Leads US in Patent Applications

In 2011 China surpassed the US in patent application filings, according to data compiled by the World Intellectual Property Organization and reported in the Economist. The State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO) received 526,412 applications in 2011, compared to slightly more than 500,000 at the USPTO and approximately 340,000 at the Japan Patent Office. In related news, the European Patent Office and SIPO recently announced that Chinese to English machine translation is now available in its Patent Translate service, which is integrated with Espacenet. An additional four million Chinese patent documents are now available in Espacenet.