GENEVA, Feb 7: Chinese international patent applications more than doubled in 2006, reflecting a “changing geography of demand” along with other Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, the World Intellectual Property Organisation said on Wednesday.

China filed 3,910 patents under the aegis of WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in 2006, up 56.8 per cent from the previous year and comprising 2.7 per cent of total applications.

South Korea’s filings were up 26.6 per cent at 5,935, while Japan saw its applications climb 8.3 per cent to 26,906.

The United States remains by far the biggest filer of patents in volume terms. Its 49,555 international filings in 2006, up 6.1 per cent from the previous year, gave it a global market share of 34.1 per cent, WIPO said.

“The number of international patent applications continues to rise with impressive growth from northeast Asian countries. Increasingly developing country economies are capitalising on the tools of the intellectual property system for wealth creation,” said WIPO deputy director general Francis Gurry.

Forty-eight per cent of all international patent applications now go through the PCT system, he told journalists.

Growth in China and South Korea reflects the increasing export orientation of these economies, he added.

By industry sector, the greatest number of PCT applications in 2006 was in telecommunications (10.5pc), pharmaceuticals (10.4pc) and information technology (10.4pc), WIPO said.

The fastest growing technology areas were semiconductors with a 28 per cent increase, information technology at 22 per cent, and pharmaceuticals at 21 per cent, it noted.—AFP