The New York Times blog reports on a new study showing that China will soon take the lead in patents filed worldwide:
Having passed Germany (exports), Japan (gross domestic product) and the United States (auto sales) over the past year, China is now poised to lead the world in yet another category: patent application filings.
A new study released this week by Thomson Reuters says that by 2011 China will likely pass the United States and Japan in new patent applications.
With research and development spending rising here, and Beijing trying to encourage innovation, patent application filings in China are soaring.
In 2009, China filed about 279,298 patent applications, ranking third behind Japan, which led the world with 357,338, and the United States, which had 321,741 filings, according to Thomson Reuters.
But the growth of patent filings in Japan and the United States is slowing, while Chinese patent filings are surging in categories as varied as natural products and polymers and digital computers.
Read more about innovation in China via CDT.
