China: Foreign Originating Patent Applications reach 1 million.

According the Chinese Patent Office, the number of accumulated foreign originating patent applications reached 1 million in September 2010. Of these, 865,000 are invention patent applications, 16,000 are utility model applications and 121,000 are design applications.

The top filing countries are Japan (361,000), US (242,000), Germany (89,000), South Korea (81,000), France (37,000), Netherlands (35,000), Switzerland (27,000), UK (22,000), Sweden (17,000), Italy (16,000) and Finland (10,000). These countries account for more than 90% of all foreign originating patent applications filed in China.

It took 20 years (1985-2005) to reach the first half million and only 5 years to reach the second half million. Following this trend, the next million are expected in the next 5 to 8 years.