Bildnachweis: Huber & Schüssler.
China’s presence in the European patent system is growing at an accelerating pace and is extending from areas in which China has traditionally been strong, such as digital communications, to a broader and more diverse spectrum.
The European Patent Office (EPO) Technology Dashboard 2025 shows that Chinese companies and researchers filed a record 22,031 patent applications with the EPO in 2025, making China the third-largest country of origin for patent appli- cations filed with the Office for the first time. The EPO announced that the number of applications rose by 9.7% compared with the previous year, making China the fastest-growing country among the top ten applicant nations. Among the technology sectors represented by Chinese applicants, transport and semiconductors grew the fastest, with growth of more than 30% in each case. China also recorded in- creased activity in biotechnology and organic fine chemicals. Over the last ten years, EP applications from China have seen double-digit growth, tripling from more than 7,000 in 2016 to over 22,000 in 2025. It has been recognised that international patent families from China are now growing faster than purely domestic applications in key sectors. This trend may be attributed both to strong domestic innovation capacity and to the increasingly global orientation of Chinese companies.
China’s rapid rise in pharmaceuticals
China has also caught up in the pharmaceutical sector. A look at patenting activity in the phar- maceutical and biotechnology sectors shows that China harbours particular ambitions in these fields of technology. The US is still the leader here, but China’s rapid rise since the beginning of the 2000s is also evident in this area. Patent applications from China in the pharmaceutical sector have since increased almost thirty-fold, and in the biotechnology sector by more than a hundred-fold. In absolute terms, China is on the same level as the USA and even surpasses it in the biotech sector. Japan and South Korea are also showing a steady upward trend here, albeit at a significantly lower level. Europe, on the other hand, was initially on an equal level with the US, but has been falling noticeably behind since the mid-2000s. A key reason for China’s rise is the substantial fund- ing provided to support individual high-tech innovations and industries. China has pumped more than EUR 1 trillion into its major industrial policy programme ‘Made in China 2025’. It is an industrial masterplan unveiled by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China ten years ago with the aim that China evolves from the world’s workshop into a leading global power in high technology and innovation. This enables influential patent applications in China to be more frequently filed by state-owned enterprises, followed by private companies and only then by foreign companies. Domestic patents – including inventions from universities and research institutes – are, on the whole, more significant than patent applications from abroad. A development scenario is emerging in which China is already committing to domestic inventions in the long term and is increasingly reducing its technological dependence on foreign countries. From an international perspective, this presents considerable challenges – particularly regarding international research cooperation and economical competition. Reportedly, over 11,300 patents from German applicants alone are now in Chinese ownership, whereas there were virtually none at the turn of the millennium.
China’s access to german technologies
A core industrial sector of the German economy that has been particularly affected is mechanical engineering. The transfer of patent rights takes place via several channels. One is a company takeover with all existing IP rights. Another channel is the patent sale of single or several patents with the change of ownership. A third channel consists of licensing of individual IP rights without the transfer of ownership. Whilst company takeovers are often the subject of intense public debate (e.g. takeover of the Augsburg-based robotic company Kuka by the Chinese company Midea), licensing and, in particular, individual patent sales usually go unnoticed. Studies suggest that such investments are, in some cases, specifically linked to technology transfer and facilitate China’s technological catch-up. These developments point to an inequality of market access. Whilst German innovations pass into Chinese ownership relatively freely, China shields its own market more rigorously.
Conclusion
For German companies, this development presents a twofold challenge. On the one hand, competitive pressure is mounting as Chinese companies are increasingly able to develop technologies independently and set global standards. On the other hand, there is a risk that dependence on key Chinese technologies – for example in electric mobility, medical technology, or digitalisation – will continue to grow unless Europe takes decisive action to counter this trend. SMEs in Germany and Europe should therefore monitor this development closely: it demonstrates the extent to which industrial policy and innovation strategies in China are geared towards long-term autonomy – with direct consequences for markets, supply chains, and competitive conditions worldwide.
About the author:
Dr Andrea Schüssler is a partner of Huber & Schüssler, a patent law firm founded in 1996 and specialised in Life Science patenting. She has great experience in patent prosecution, opposition and appeal procedures before the German and European Patent Offices, and FTO analyses. She is a German patent attorney as well as an admitted Representative before the European Patent Office and Unified Patent Court.
