On December 7 local time, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) released its annual report "2020 World Intellectual Property indicators". The report points out that although the global trademark and industrial design application activities continued to rise in 2019, patent applications showed a rare decline. Data from the world intellectual property organization show that China's long-term economic growth has continued to promote the remarkable development of global intellectual property. In 2019, China will continue to play a leading role in the world's intellectual property field and make great contributions, and continue to rank first in most areas of the world's intellectual property indicators. The report collects and analyzes intellectual property data from intellectual property authorities in more than 150 countries and regions, aiming to provide reference information for policy makers, business circles, investors, experts and scholars. According to the report, in 2019, the number of global patent applications was 3224200, a year-on-year decrease of 3%; the number of industrial product design applications was 1.3609 million, a year-on-year increase of 1.3%; and the number of plant variety applications was 21400, a year-on-year increase of 7.8%. < / P > < p > in 2019, the number of patent applications in China is 1.4 million, ranking the first in the world, which is more than twice the number of applications from the United States (621500). Japan (308000), South Korea (219000) and Europe (181500) were ranked after the United States. The top five patent applications together accounted for 84.7% of the world total. As a powerful intellectual property country, the number of patent applications in China has declined for the first time in recent 24 years. The main reason is that China has implemented the overall regulatory transformation aimed at optimizing the application structure and improving the application quality, resulting in the decline in the number of applications. Germany (67400), India (53600), Canada (36500), Russia (35500) and Australia (29800) are among the top ten countries in the global patent application volume in 2019. Among them, the number of patent applications in Canada and India increased, while that in Australia, Germany and Russia decreased. < / P > < p > in 2019, the number of patent applications in Asia accounted for nearly two-thirds (65%) of the world total, which was significantly increased compared with the 50.9% share of Asia in 2009, mainly due to the long-term growth of China's economy. The number of patent applications in North America is only slightly higher than one fifth (20.4%) of the world total in 2019, and the proportion of patent applications in Europe is slightly more than one tenth (11.3%). Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Oceania together account for 3.3% of the global total in 2019. < / P > < p > in terms of patent applications filed overseas by citizens, US residents filed 236000 patent applications overseas in 2019, which continues to be the world's leader. Japan (206800), Germany (104700), China (84300) and South Korea (76800) followed the United States. < / P > < p > in 2019, the global effective patents increased by 7% to about 15 million. The United States has the largest number of valid patents (3.1 million), followed by China (2.7 million) and Japan (2.1 million). More than half of the valid patents in the United States come from abroad, and about 80% of the valid patents in Japan. < / P > < p > in terms of trademarks, there were 11.5 million trademark applications in the world in 2019, covering 15.2 million categories, an increase of 5.9% over the same period of last year, and the growth has been realized for ten consecutive years. Among them, China had the largest number of applications, covering about 7.8 million categories, followed by the United States (672700 categories), Japan (546200 categories), Iran (454900 categories), and the European Union (407700 categories). Among the top 20, Brazil, Vietnam, Iran, Russia and Turkey grew by 22.3%, 19.3%, 18.4%, 16.5% and 15.5% respectively from 2018 to 2019. Asia accounted for 70.6% of all trademark applications in 2019, up from 38.7% in 2009. Europe's share fell from 36% in 2009 to 15.4% in 2019. North America accounts for 5.7% of the world total in 2019. The combined share of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Oceania is 8.3% in 2019. In 2019, there are about 58.2 million valid trademark registrations in the world, an increase of 15.2% over that in 2018. Among them, China alone has 25.2 million, ranking first, followed by the United States with 2.8 million and India with 2 million. Deng Hongsen, director general of the world intellectual property organization, said that the world intellectual property index data in 2019 showed that the demand for intellectual property tools was on a long-term growth trend, and promoted the global economy to develop towards more and more globalization and digitization. At the end of 2019, the vigorous use of intellectual property tools shows a high level of innovation and creativity. The novel coronavirus pneumonia has promoted the adoption of new technologies and promoted the digitalization of daily life. In terms of intellectual property, it will be more important for the country to have intellectual property rights in the post epidemic era. (reporter Yang Hai)