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QINGDAO TODAY
在线翻译:
szdaily -> Business -> 
Chinese investors’ US patent holdings hit record high
    2019-01-14  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

CHINESE inventors received a record number of U.S. patents in 2018 and are on pace to overtake Germany in the No. 4 position of top recipients, according to an analysis of filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Inventors working for Chinese companies were issued 12,589 U.S. patents in 2018, a 12 percent jump on the year and a 10-fold increase over the 1,223 they received a decade ago. The United States still dominates the field, with 46 percent of the 308,853 U.S. utility patents issued last year, followed by companies based in Japan, South Korea and Germany.

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) alone received 9,100 patents, retaining its spot as the top recipient and extending the firm’s streak to 26 years, according to the analysis by Fairview Research’s IFI Claims Patent Services.

Overall, the number of patents issued by the patent office declined 3.5 percent for the year, with every major country except China receiving fewer patents than the year before.

“The continuing push by China is very interesting,” said Larry Cady, senior analyst with IFI Claims. “China’s going to overtake Germany shortly — maybe not next year, but the year after.”

The world’s second-largest economy has spent billions of dollars funding research in key technology fields like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology.

The steady rise in patent filings suggests Chinese firms are developing their own technology as well. The U.S. patent office has a process to challenge patents filed based on stolen ideas, although few such proceedings have been filed against anyone.

The decline in the total topline number of issued patents reflects fewer applications lodged in the past couple of years, though there was a slight uptick last year, Cady said.

While Cady said it’s hard to know why applications had fallen, some companies have been hesitant to seek patents amid confusion over what types of inventions would pass muster, particularly in the software fields, combined with a broader attack on the system by firms that claimed patents did more to hinder innovation than encourage it.

Patents are considered a “grand bargain” in which an inventor agrees to publicize how to duplicate their idea for others to build on, and in return gets exclusive rights to the invention for 20 years from the date of the application.

Six of the top 10 recipients of patents are U.S. firms, including chip rivals Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc., as well as Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. Automaker Ford Motor Co. was the only non-tech firm in the top 10, and it’s been focusing a lot of effort on autonomous vehicles.

The four Asian firms in the top 10 were South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. at No. 2, Canon Inc. of Japan, LG Electronics Inc., also from South Korea, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (SD-Agencies)

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