DPMA Annual Report 2021: China Continues in the Fast Lane

The German Patent and Trademark Office (Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt, „DPMA“ for short) published its annual report 2021 in May 2022. It contains detailed data on application numbers, rankings, and current technology trends.

The number of decisions to grant was at a record level in 2021, with positive decisions for 21,113 inventions. This represents an increase of 22% compared to the previous year. The total number of new patent applications decreased by 5.7% to 58,568 filings but remained at a high level.

With regard to the origin of applications, the share of filings from Germany remained essentially unchanged from the previous year at 68%. In addition to a particularly strong increase in filings from France (+30.7%), there was also a particular increase in filings from China (+13.8%). In all technology fields related to digitalisation, the number of published German patent applications by Chinese applicants increased significantly compared to the previous year.

The DPMA groups patent applications in technology areas and technology fields. In the technology area of digitalisation, the largest number of filings fell into the technology field of computer technology (15,492 applications with an increase of +6.3%), knocking the technology field of digital communication technology (+1.4%) from its top position from the previous year. Inventions using artificial intelligence and/or machine learning play a major role in this field. Here, too, Chinese applicants are prominently represented; with 2,017 applications, China is not yet in the same league as the USA (5,943 applications) in the technology field of computer technology, but can report an increase of 33.3% compared with the previous year and overtook Germany and Japan in absolute filing numbers since 2020. The number of filings from the U.S. increased by 5.1%.

The fastest-growing technology field in digitalisation since 2020 was audiovisual technology (+9.3%). Here, China grew by as much as 42% and, with 1,055 applications, is close on the heels of the USA (1,234 applications) in absolute terms.

In the technology field of "digital communications technology", which covers in particular inventions in connection with the 5G mobile communications standard, China even managed to surpass the USA (4,115 applications at -2.4%) for the first time, taking the lead with 4,308 applications (+6.8%).