Graphene is one of the recent research focuses in the fields of physics, chemistry, materials science, and etc. Its excellent electrical, mechanical, optical, chemical and thermal properties make graphene become a highprofile competitive emerging technology. And the number of global graphene patent applications gained sustained rapid growth in recent years. In this paper, based on the DII database, we made a patent analysis on international graphene patent applications, revealed global research and development trend in graphene patent technology with the help of TDA, Aureka and other tools.

The international PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) patent applications in 2010 increased by 4.8% to 162 900. As to specific technical fields, the digital communication field had the most rapid growth of 17.3%. Applications originated from China saw a strong growth high up to 56.2% and surpassed the Republic of Korea to become the No. 4 largest country user of PCT system in 2010. ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies Co. listed the 2nd and 4th place among the top applicants respectively. Statistics showed that the features of the patent filing abroad from China are that: the number of PCT filing from China is still fall behind compared with that of United States and Japan, the quality of patent applications has some level of improvement, the inner-structure of filing abroad is imbalanced and the subsidization policy for filing abroad has achieved initial success.

Unilever is one of the world's largest food and cleaning company. Unilever has filed over 1500 patent applications since China enacted the first patent law in 1985 and most of those applications are PCT applications. Food and cleaning safety is closely related to people's lives and health. Unilever does a lot of work in food and cleaning products technology research and patent layout and sets an example to China’s food and cleaning companies.