Dongguan, China-based Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications, which makes the OnePlus line of smartphones, submitted 281 applications to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) last year—the most of any entity. Nine of the top 10 were U.S. or Chinese companies. (National Post)

Talking point: Some tech groups and IP lawyers say a lack of policy and comprehensive programs to commercialize and protect domestic R&D allows foreign firms to reap the profits of Canadian ideas. Many of the most frequent foreign filers have large Canadian offices and operations, such as U.S. semiconductor giant Qualcomm and Chinese telecom-equipment firm Huawei. Non-resident applicants have long filed significantly more overall—32,250 submissions to 4,238 domestic ones in 2019, per CIPO. Canadian entities are themselves filing abroad, with 13,045 U.S. patent applications in 2018, and 1,105 in China. In April, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the federal government was “putting enormous focus on making sure that the IP that is financed, developed and created in Canada is adequately protected.”