U.S. universities dominate in international patents

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American universities applied for far more international patents than those of other countries in 2014, according to a report released Friday by the World International Patent Organization.

Major telecom companies from China and the United States filed the most applications over all, and only one university (the University of California system) makes the top 50 of global patent applicants. But the rankings of universities are a reflection of tech transfer programs. Despite concerns that American universities may be losing ground to those of other countries, 9 of the top 10 universities are American. But in the next 10, 6 are from outside the United States, and appear to be increasing their number of applications at faster rates than their American counterparts.

The following table shows the top 20 educational institutions in patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Several of the institutions listed here are university systems, not individual campuses. The full table may be found here.

International Patent Applications, 2014

Rank Among Universities	Rank Among All Applicants	University	Number of applications
1	47	U. of California system	413
2	83	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	234
3	132	U. of Texas System	154
4	145	Harvard U.	147
5	163	Johns Hopkins U.	135
6	201	Stanford U.	113
7	206	Columbia U.	112
8	225	California Institute of Technology	103
9	249	U. of Pennsylvania	94
10	253	Seoul National U. (South Korea)	92
11	275	Cornell U.	87
12	290	Nanyang Technological U. (Singapore)	82
13	293	U. of Florida	81
13	293	Kyoto U. (Japan)	81
13	293	Danmarks Tekniske U. (Denmark)	81
16	304	U. of Tokyo (Japan)	79
17	305	U. of Michigan	78
18	312	Korea University (South Korea)	77
19	314	Peking University (China)	76
20	325	U. of Washington	74