China Increases U.S. Patent Holdings While IBM Keeps Top Spot

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 Bloomberg.

An analysis of filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office shows that 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 U.S. 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.

IBM alone received 9,100 patents, retaining its spot as the top recipient and extending IBM’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 world’s number two economy has spent billions of dollars to fund research in key technology fields like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology. It’s sparked a global technology arms race that’s at the heart of President Donald Trump’s trade war, as Trump contends that China is stealing American know-how. The steady rise in patent filings suggests Chinese companies 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.

Six of the top 10 recipients of patents are U.S. companies, including chip rivals Intel and Qualcomm, as well as Microsoft and Apple. Automaker Ford was the only non-tech company in the top 10, and it’s been focusing a lot of effort on autonomous vehicles. The four Asian companies in the top 10 were South Korea’s Samsung at No. 2, Canon of Japan, LG, also from South Korea, and Taiwanese TSMC. Ford, Huawei and Chinese display-screen maker BOE were the only companies in the top 20 to see double-digit increases over the year-ago period.