Patently, China on the move

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-11 07:45

The number of applications for new patents has risen rapidly in China, which is set to pull ahead of Japan - the current leader in new patents - by 2012, according to a report released Wednesday.

The nation is moving away from traditional agriculture and manufacturing industry, and concentrating more on innovation, especially in areas such as chemical engineering, the report by Thomson Reuters Scientific said.

Homegrown solar-power cars that have secured international patents draw visitors' attention at an IPR exposition in Dalian, Liaoning province, on September 3, 2008. [Asianewsphoto]

"China is set to dominate the patent landscape by 2012 ... to become the world's leading innovator," said Bob Stembridge, a spokesman for Thomson Scientific, one of the research arms of Thomson Reuters.

"Inventions from China have been growing at a faster rate than from any region in the world. This has been driven by government incentives," Stembridge told a telephone briefing.

These include bonuses worth a year's salary given to inventors who receive new patents, said Eve Zhou, the consultant who wrote the report.

"In China, 16 percent of patents come from academia," Zhou told the briefing. This compares to 4 percent in the United States and 1 percent in Japan.

"That is because the Chinese government has much direction over what technical area should be researched."

Thomson Scientific analyzed the top five patenting authorities globally - Japan, the US, the European Patent Office, South Korea and China.

It counted the number of new patents filed from 2001 to 2007 and broke them down by how they were filed - by their own nationals to their national patent authority, or by foreign companies seeking patent protection within the country.

"China, from humble beginnings, is experiencing the most rapid growth," Stembridge said.

Japan has the highest total patent volumes year to year during the period, but the US has been narrowing that lead. For the period, Japan had 37 percent of all new patent applications with 3.5 million. The US had 27 percent, or nearly 2.6 million. China, South Korea and Europe each had 12 percent of the share.

But China's year-to-year growth in the sheer number of patents was marked, the report found.

Based on the previous five years, Thomson Reuters predicted Japan's annual growth rate in new patents would fall from 2 percent to -2.7 percent, the US would stay at around 13 percent to 14 percent, but China would surge from 26.8 percent annual growth to 34 percent.

"China is set to surpass Japan in 2011 and the US in 2012," Stembridge said. "By 2011, China will become the most prolific basic patenting authority in the world."

The report did not look at the quality of the patents, whether they were granted or which precise areas they involved.

Zhou said they broadly involved chemical engineering, digital computers and telephone and data transmission.