On Thursday, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published a list of statistics related to global Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent application filings. As noted in the WIPO news release (link below), the first chart discusses the number of published PCT patent applications by company, with Matsushita (Japan) leading the pack with 2,100 published applications in 2006, with Philips Electronics N.V. (Netherlands) second with 2,041, and Siemens (Germany) third with 1,644. The remainder of the top 10, in order, include Huawei Technologies (China), Bosch (Germany), Toyota (Japan), Qualcomm (United States), Microsoft (United States), Motorola (United States), and Nokia (Finland).

Statistics regarding the number of applications by countries of origin are also provided, including final figures from 2003-2006, and estimated figures for 2007 as WIPO will continue to receive PCT applications during the first half of 2008 that were filed with national patent offices in 2007. For 2006, the top ten countries (and the number of PCT applications in 2006) include the United States (50,941), Japan (27,033), Germany (16,732), France (6,242), the Republic of Korea (5,944), United Kingdom (5,090), Netherlands (4,529), China (3,951), Switzerland (3,577), and Sweden (3,316). Statistics for the next five countries on the list, as well as a sum of all remaining countries, is also provided within the first chart, and a detailed breakdown by all countries is also provided near the end of the news release.

In addition, WIPO also compiled a list of the main fields of technology in which PCT applications were published from 2003-2007. For 2007, the top fields include telecommunications (15,751 applications), information technology (15,109), pharmaceuticals and cosmetics (13,936), analysis, measurement, and control technology (instruments field; 13,531), and medical technology (11,890). A total of thirty technological fields are provided within the full list.

WIPO News Release: LINK