In the recent 2019 WIPO World IP Report, from 2015 to 2017, the total number of patents and scientific activities in about 30 major cities accounted for 69% and 48% of the world's total, respectively. These cities are mainly located in China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United States.

The report argues that innovation cooperation is getting closer. In the early 2000s, 64% of scientific papers were completed by scientists as a team, and 54% of patents were obtained by a team of inventors. In recent years, these numbers have increased to nearly 88% and 68%, respectively. In terms of patents, the share of international cooperative inventions continued to climb to 11% in 2009, but has declined slightly since then, in part due to the rapid growth of domestic cooperation in some countries.

Most international cooperation takes place in top metropolitan hotspots. The top ten hot spots (San Francisco-San Jose, New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Boston, Shanghai, London, Beijing, Bangalore, and Paris) account for 26% of all international cooperation inventions, and the hot spots in the United States are the world's most closely cooperated zone.

The report also states that before 2000, Japan, the United States, and Western European economies accounted for 90% of global patent activity and more than 70% of global scientific publishing activities. With the increase of patent activity in China, India, Israel, Singapore, South Korea and other countries, the above share fell to 70% and 50% respectively from 2015 to 2017.

At the same time, there are significant differences between the patterns of scientific and inventive activities. Scientific activities are more common worldwide. Universities and other research institutions in many middle-income economies have produced a large number of scientific publications, but these economies have produced relatively few patents.

(Source: www.people.com.cn)