Over 95% of the Chinese applications were filed domestically with the State Intellectual Property Office. The vast majority cover Chinese “innovations” that make only tiny changes on existing designs. In many other cases, a Chinese filer “patents” a foreign invention in China with the goal of suing the foreign inventor for “infringement” in a Chinese legal system that doesn’t recognize foreign patents ….

The most compelling evidence is the count of “triadic” patent filings or grants, where an application is filed with or patent granted by all three offices for the same innovation. According to the OECD, in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, there were only 473 triadic patent filings from China versus 14,399 from the U.S., 14,525 from Europe, and 13,446 from Japan. Data for patent grants in 2010 by individual offices paint a virtually identical picture.

Starkly put, 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, but only 1% of the patent filings with or patents granted by any of the leading patent offices outside China. Further, half of the China-origin patents were granted to subsidiaries of foreign multinationals.

The authors go on to examine the causes of the hidden gulf between R&D spending and real innovation, including highly political resource allocation and widespread academic fraud.

See also China’s Long March to Innovation Success at Forbes.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic fraud, innovation, patent, r&d, research and development
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…Can China become a prodigious inventor? The answer, in truth, will play out over decades — and go a long way toward determining not only China’s future, but also the shape of the global economy.

Clues to the Chinese approach emerge from a recent government document containing goals for drastically increasing the nation’s production of patents. It offers a telling glimpse of how China intends to engineer a more innovative society.

The document, published in November by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, is called the “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020).” It discusses broad economic objectives as well as specific targets to be attained by 2015.

In a recent interview, David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, pointed to the Chinese targets for 2015 and called them “mind-blowing numbers.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: innovation, patent
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Having passed Germany (exports), Japan (gross domestic product) and the United States (auto sales) over the past year, China is now poised to lead the world in yet another category: patent application filings.

A new study released this week by Thomson Reuters says that by 2011 China will likely pass the United States and Japan in new patent applications.

With research and development spending rising here, and Beijing trying to encourage innovation, patent application filings in China are soaring.

In 2009, China filed about 279,298 patent applications, ranking third behind Japan, which led the world with 357,338, and the United States, which had 321,741 filings, according to Thomson Reuters.

But the growth of patent filings in Japan and the United States is slowing, while Chinese patent filings are surging in categories as varied as natural products and polymers and digital computers.

Read more about innovation in China via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: innovation, patent
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China’s parliament on Saturday passed a revised patent law that will permit inventors to seek patents in other countries before obtaining them domestically, opening the door to more filings by Chinese firms overseas.

The amended law, which will take effect on Oct. 1 next year, aims to encourage innovation and improve China’s international competitiveness, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Currently, the law requires that those who come up with inventions in China must apply for domestic patents before applying for them in another country.

However, the amendment stipulates that before they can apply for patents overseas, inventors must first have their innovations vetted by the government to determine whether they should be made “national secrets”, Xinhua said.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: IP, legislation, patent
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