Sobering Statistics Put China's Innovation Into Perspective

In the graphical perspective,
things become smaller if the distance
from the observer increases

Professor Anil Gupta and Haiyan Wang, writers of the book 'Getting China and India right', put China's innovation statistics into perspective.

Patent filings in 2008

• U.S.A. 400,769 filings
• Japan 502,054 filings
• China 203,481 filings

Gupta and Wang have a point when they argue that the Chinese inventions patented outside China are a more objective measure than the ones registered by State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO).
The most compelling statistic is the number for triadic patents or triadic patent families (patents that origin from one country but that are patented by the European Patent Office, United States Patent and Trademark Office and the Japan Patent Office).

Triadic patent families according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2008

• Europe 14,525 filings
• U.S.A. 14,399 filings
• Japan 13,446 filings
• China 473 filings

See the Compendium on Patent Statistics for 2008 here (pdf) on page 6. 

However, I would argue that these patent filings are not the best measure. Patent registrations would be a far more better indication of patent quality. 

Professor Gupta and Mr Wang wrote: in 2010 China accounted for

• 20% of the world's population
• 9% of the world's GDP
• 12% of the world's R&D expenditure
• 1% of the patent filings with or patents granted by any of the leading patent offices outside China. 
• 50 % of the China-origin patents were granted to subsidiaries of foreign multinationals   

Professor Gupta's and Mr Wang's Wall Street Journal article 'China's Innovation Is A Paper Tiger' can be read here and should not be confused with the title of my thesis 'Paper Tiger Or Roaring Dragon, China's TRIPs Implementations and Enforcement'.

UPDATE August 2, 2011: 
Joff Wild, editor of Intellectual Asset Management gives an update since 2008. In short: the growth in the number of China's triadic patent filings/grants paints a rosy picture. However China's innovation prospect is much bleaker. On this I concur with Mr Wild. Read more about the relation between innovation and intellectual property and innovation and censorship here.

continue reading ...

China’s global patent docket

The People's Daily reports that in 2010 China filed 6,552 invention patent applications at the USPTO, 2,049 at the European Patent Office, 1,001 at the Japan Patent Office and 496 at the Korean Intellectual Property Office. IP Komodo had some research done a while back on Asian emerging markets which showed that China was consistently filing over 6,000 PCTs a year now. By comparison, India is around half that - in 2008 Indian inventors filed 2,879 patents. More detailed data on the comparatively much lower SE Asia filings is on my IP Komodo blog here

Is this more evidence that China is blazing a trail towards developed country levels of patent filings and leaving its Asian emerging neighbours far behind? We know there are some poor quality patents China’s global docket – patents filed because government grants paid for them and otherwise disinterested applicants filed them anyway. Or patent thickets created by some of China’s global IT players to find a way into the pools and standards groups. IP Komodo would be interested in seeing how many Chinese triadic patents there are – that is patents filed in the US, EU and Japan. This by virtue of the cost and difficulty reaching grant is a better measure of strong patents and thus innovation at a fundamental level. In 2005 Europe, US and Japan still accounted for 88% of triadic patents, with Korea as a close 4th. Does anyone have any up to date data on whether China is increasing its triadic patent count?

Guest post by IP Komodo Dragon

continue reading ...