jrxs4all schreef op 11 december 2013 18:16:
Internationally in 2012, Chinese inventors filed 18,627 applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), just 228 applications fewer than fourth-place Germany, behind the U.S. and Japan. At the USPTO in 2012, Chinese inventors filed fewer patent applications than eight other nations (U.S., Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, U.K. and France), but their applications increased by 41% over the prior year, more than twice the rate of increase of any of those other countries and 2012 marked the first year a Chinese company entered the rankings of the top 50 U.S. patent recipients (Hong Fu Jin Precision Industry Corp., at #40, with 782 U.S. patents granted). Over the past decade, U.S. patent applications from Chinese inventors have increased more than 1,000%.
The explosion in Chinese patent applications results partly from the nation’s emphasis on R&D. China’s telecom giant, Huawei Corporation, increased R&D spending by more than 25% in 2012, to $4.7 billion, and holds more than 50,000 patents worldwide. China’s other telecom giant, ZTE Corp, invested $1.4 billion in R&D in 2012 and led the world in PCT filings for the second straight year, with more than 3,900 applications (32% more than second-place Panasonic). Overall, China spends almost $300 billion on R&D, second only to the U.S., with one recent study predicting R&D spending in China will exceed that of the U.S. by 2023.
Additionally, China, Japan and Korea are more efficient at converting R&D dollars into patents than U.S. or European countries. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), for every million dollars spent on R&D, Korean entities apply for 3.7 patents, Chinese 3.5 patents, Japanese 2.9 patents and Americans just 0.9 patents.