Spurred by the rebound of the economy and strong research results by universities, the United States remained the world’s top inventive country in 2014, accounting for 28.6 percent of all international patent applications, up from 27.9 percent a year earlier, according to a report by a specialized U.N. agency.
The annual report from the World Intellectual Property Organization reported that Japan was the second most inventive country, accounting for 19.7 percent of patents last year, while China, the world’s biggest emerging economy, came in third, with 11.9 percent.
A record, 215,000 international patent applications, up 4.5 percent over 2013, were filed under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty, or PCT, the global agreement that allows inventors and industry to obtain patent protection in multiple countries. That was a 4.5 percent increase over 2013.
The World Intellectual Property Organization tracks applications in 148 nations.
Again, U.S. performance was strengthened by American universities, which occupied nine of the top ten rankings in international patent filings by educational institutions.
The University of California, with 413 applications, was the top applicant among world educational institutions, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with 234, University of Texas system with 154, and Harvard University , with 147.
In all, 28 U.S. universities were ranked in the top 50. These included 9th place University of Pennsylvania, with 94 filings, 26th-ranked University of North Carolina, with 59, 40th-ranked Emory University, with 44 filings, and 43rd-ranked University of Southern California, with 41 filings.
The only non-U.S. educational institution in the top 10 rankings was Seoul National University with 92 filings.
“U.S. universities attract the world’s brightest minds and are well-resourced, allowing them to engage in world-class research,” said Francis Gurry, WIPO director-general. “In addition, the U.S. long ago established an institutional framework that embraces the patent system as a tool to take promising academic inventions to the marketplace.”
While the U.S. topped the rankings for the most applications, the single largest filer, however, was China’s telecom conglomorate Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, with 3,442 published applications. San Diego-based Qualcomm, Inc. was No. 2, with 2,409.
China’s ZTE Corp. was No.3, with 2,179.