Three telecoms giants from China and the United States led international patent filing activity via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2014. WIPO is the global forum for intellectual property services. The self-funding agency of the United Nations has 188 member states.

According to WIPO, China and the U.S. accounted for 87% of the total growth in filings under WIPO?s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which saw some 215,000 applications in 2014, a 4.5% increase over the previous year.

Huawei Technologies, with 3,442 published PCT applications, overtook Japanese Panasonic as the largest applicant in 2014. Qualcomm was the second largest applicant in 2014, with 2,409 published applications, while China?s ZTE Corp. took third place with 2,179 PCT applications.

The U.S. was the primary country of origin for PCT filers in 2014, with 61,492 applications and 7.1% growth. Japan followed with 42,459 applications, representing a 3% decline on 2013. Applicants from China filed 25,539 applications ? an 18.7% annual increase.

Europe showed signs of improvement as it strives to address a challenging economic environment. For the first time since 2007, the top three E.U. countries recorded growth in PCT filings, with strong growth coming from France and the United Kingdom.

The top three applicants have similar patent filing profiles, with digital communication accounting for the bulk of their total filings. Digital communication accounted for two-thirds of all PCT applications filed by Huawei, followed by computer technology and telecommunications, with each field accounting for 11% of the total. Qualcomm had a similar PCT filing profile to that of Huawei, with digital communication accounting for two-fifths of their total applications, followed by computer technology (18%), audio-visual technology (11%) and telecommunications (10%). As for ZTE, digital communication accounted for slightly over three-fifths of all filings, followed by computer technology (14%) and telecommunications (13%).

Among the top 50 applicants, Huawei (+1,332) saw the largest increases in PCT filings, followed by Tencent Technology of China (+727) and Microsoft (+652). In contrast, Panasonic (-1,157) and Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha of Japan (-612) saw the largest declines.

The University of California, with 413 published applications, is the top applicant among educational institutions followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (234), the University of Texas System (154) and Harvard University (147). US universities occupy 9 of the top 10 positions among educational institutions.

Computer technology with 17,653 published applications ? or 8.4% of the total ? accounted for the largest share of PCT applications, followed by digital communication (7.7%) and electronic machinery (7.3%). Amongst the top 10 fields, computer technology saw the fastest growth (+19.4%), followed by medical technology (+17.1%) and digital communication (+14.5%). The share of computer technology filings in total applications has increased from 3% in 1990 to 8% in 2014. Similarly, the share of digital communications has increased from less than 1% in 1990 to 8% in 2014. Microsoft is the top applicant for computer technology, followed by Intel and Tencent Technology.