In March of this year WIPO issued a press release "International Patent Filings via WIPO Continued to Grow in 2020 Despite COVID-19 Pandemic". This stated that "International patent applications via WIPO in 2020 continued to grow amid the COVID-19 pandemic’s vast human and economic toll, with leading users China and the U.S. each marking annual growth in filings.": - a perfectly true statement.
However, a slightly different picture is obtained if one looks at PCT monthly statistics. The following chart plots for each month, the 12 month average number of filings over the preceding 12 months.
Is it just me, or is the story not what happened with Covid (a slowdown might be expected), but what happened in the year preceding Covid?
