The growth rate of China's applications under the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT) to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ranked No 1 in the world last year.

China - a WIPO member country - submitted 1,782 PCT applications last year, up 37.8 per cent from the previous year, registering the fastest growth rate among other member countries, statistics with WIPO show.

The number of Chinese PCT applications last year ranked 13th in the world.

China's Huawei Technologies, a private high-tech enterprise, submitted 177 applications last year, ranking No 49 among all fellow enterprises.

The high growth rate of China's PCT applications indicates the country is running on a fast track towards globalization, said Francis Gurry, deputy director-general of WIPO.

"I forecast that China will maintain a fast pace in patent application increases over the next five years," Gurry was quoted as saying by the China Intellectual Property News.

The World Intellectual Property Organization, based in Geneva, received 120,100 PCT applications last year, up 4 per cent from the previous year.

The top application country is the United States with 41,870 applications and the second largest is Japan with 19,980 applications.

Germany, France and the United Kingdom took the third, the fourth the fifth seats respectively.

The Dutch electronic giant Philips submitted 2,362 PCT applications last year, becoming the No 1 enterprise applicant.

The PCT simplifies and reduces the costs of obtaining international patent protection and facilitates public access to a wealth of technical information relating to inventions.

By filing an international patent application under the PCT, rights holders can simultaneously seek protection for an invention in 182 member countries throughout the world.

China formally became a member state of the PCT in 1994.

To keep China's Patent Law and its Implementing Rules in further conformity with international treaties, certain provisions have been amended.

The State Intellectual Property Office has become the receiving office, international searching authority and international preliminary examination authority of the PCT and has performed its obligations and responsibilities set by the treaty.

International applications filed through PCT have been handled according to special procedures that differ from domestic applications.

China has handled a surge in patent applications in recent years.

More than 2.3 million applications for practical novelty patents, industrial design patents and trademarks have been handled by the end of January since 1985 when the country launched the patent service, said Xing Shengcai, an official of the State Intellectual Property Office.

(China Daily April 18, 2005)