Innovators in China powered global patent applications to a new record in 2015, filing more than a million applications for the first time ever within a single year.

In total, innovators around the world lodged some 2.9 million patent applications in 2015, representing a 7.8% increase over 2014 and the sixth straight year of rising demand for patent protection, according to WIPO's annual World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report. Trademark applications jumped by 15.3% to about 6 million in 2015, as worldwide industrial design applications grew by 2.3% to 872,800.

While Chinese innovators filed the most patent applications (1,010,406) in 2015, followed by those from the United States of America (526,296) and Japan (454,285), they are comparatively home-focused: Innovators based in China filed 42,154 applications for patents outside their own borders, while U.S.-based innovators were the most outward-looking, with 237,961 patent applications filed abroad.

In total, innovators filed some 2.9 million patent applications worldwide in 2015, up 7.8% from 2014, higher than the 4.5% growth rate in 2014. Resident filings, where innovators filed for protection in their home economy, accounted for around two-thirds of the 2015 total.

Among the top five offices, China (+18.7%) had the fastest growth, followed by the EPO (+4.8%), the U.S. (+1.8%) and the Republic of Korea (+1.6%). In contrast, Japan?s patent office saw a 2.2% decrease. This continues a downward trend that started in 2005 and mainly reflects decline in resident filings.

Computer technology (7.9% of the total) saw the highest percentage of published patent applications worldwide, followed by electrical machinery (7.3%) and digital communication (4.9%).