Chinese companies and researchers submitted 20,081 patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO), setting a record and ranking fourth worldwide. The top three nations for EPO patent application submission were: USA (47787 applications), Germany (25.033), and Japan (21 062). While China experienced only 0.5% annual growth rate since 2023, its number of applications doubled since 2018 and quadrupled since 2014.
According to the EPO corporate patent application rankings for 2024, Huawei was placed second globally behind Samsung but ahead of LG, Qualcomm, and RTX. Of the top 10 companies listed by the EPO for 2024, four were from Europe while South Korea, United States, China and Japan each had two representatives occupying this list.
Other than Huawei, five other Chinese companies also made it into the top 50 for EPO patent applications: CATL (1,163 applications and 14th position); ZTE (999 applications, 16th); Xiaomi (763 applications, 20th); Vivo (622 applications ranked 28th); Tencent (446 patent applications, 49th).
This demonstrates Chinese enterprises’ strength of innovation and their competitive edge within the European patent landscape.
In 2024, computer technology sector patent applications reached 16,815, making it the top category worldwide at EPO for the first time ever. This field includes artificial intelligence subfields such as machine learning and pattern recognition. Meanwhile, electrical machinery, instruments, and energy sector saw impressive year-over-year growth of 8.9% due to clean energy technologies–particularly battery technology which saw its share surge 24.0% year over year.
China’s EPO patent applications were led by digital communication, electrical machinery/apparatus/energy and computer technology applications – closely following global trends. Of those sectors, electrical machinery/apparatus/energy was the one with the fastest year-over-year growth at 32.2% year over year due to a 79% surge in battery patent applications alone.
At CATL, EVE Energy, BYD Zhuhai CosMX Battery were among the 15 global patent filers of battery technology patents for 2023-2024; four Chinese firms made this year’s list for battery patent filing compared with just two in 2023. Chinese firms have also seen their patent filing activity grow substantially in biotechnology (+15.1%) and organic fine chemistry (+16.1).
European patents require English, French and German translations in order to meet EPO approval standards, with accurate technical terminology and legal compliance making a huge impactful difference on success rates for approvals. From computer technology innovations like Huawei or CATL’s strategic patent layouts through to precise multilingual translation of legal texts for EPO approval – accurate multilingual translation is critical for EPO success rates.