Patents granted by the United States for the year 2009.
1. U.S. 95,037 patents
2. Japan 38,066
(Greater China 10,638)
3. Germany 10,353
4. South Korea 9,566
5. Taiwan 7,781
6. Canada 4,393
7. U.K. 4,011
8. France 3,805
9. China 2,270
10. Italy 1,837
...
India 720
Hong Kong 587 (Patent office counts Hong Kong as a separate entity)
Singapore 493
Russian Federation 204
Brazil 148
For 2009, Greater China's 10,638 combined total patents (i.e. China's 2,270 + Taiwan's 7,781 + Hong Kong's 587) are greater than Germany's 10,353 patents. Greater China would rank third on the U.S. patent list. The patent ranks are important because they help to explain why China is the world's largest exporter and Germany is the world's second-largest exporter. Patents play an important role.
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[Note: These are my comments from last year on "Greater China outnumbers German patents."
There are 70,000 Taiwanese companies on the Chinese Mainland. It is my guess that many Chinese exports incorporate not only Chinese patents, but also Taiwanese patents. The Taiwanese were a perennial #4 in U.S. patents received until they were passed by South Korea in 2008.
While the current number of Chinese patents appears to be insufficient to support a large high-tech export base, the combination of Greater China (i.e. Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong) patents should suffice.
Greater China's 10,370 patents (i.e. China's 1,874 + Taiwan's 7,779 + Hong Kong's 717) are greater than the number of German patents at 10,086.
Taiwan (10/09)
"Significant migration to Taiwan from the Chinese mainland began as early as A.D. 500. ..... There are a number of small political parties, including the Taiwan .... in China, and more than 70000 Taiwan companies have operations there. .... In keeping with our one China policy, the U.S. does not support Taiwan ..."
Greater China's patents play an important role in China's high-tech exports.
For 2009, due to the Great Recession worldwide, China's top two high-tech exports for "Electrical machinery & equipment" and "Power generation equipment" dipped to $537.1 billion US dollars. However, if we add in the $38.9 billion from "Optics and medical equipment" then the overall high-tech exports for 2009 are $576.0 billion U.S. dollars. See "Table 5: China's Top Exports 2009 ($ billion)."
"The 50 Most Innovative Companies April 15, 2010, 5:00PM EST
The 50 Most Innovative Companies
For the first time since Bloomberg BusinessWeek began its annual Most Innovative Companies ranking in 2005, the majority of corporations in the Top 25 are based outside the U.S. The reason: the new global leaders coming out of Asia
...
The extended Top 50 list is dominated by companies from Europe, Asia, and, in another first, South America (Petrobrás (PBR) of Brazil at No. 41). China's rise is biggest. A year ago its only representative was PC-maker Lenovo Group (LNVGY), at 46. This year Greater China is tied with Asia's postwar powerhouse, Japan, thanks to showings by BYD, Haier Electronics (27), Lenovo (29), China Mobile (CHL) (44), and Taiwan-based HTC (47). The age of Asian innovation has begun."
The question is what is the value of Chinese patents, and according to experts, it is not very high.
Value added?
Although China is ramping up its patent applications, their value is questionable. "Anyone can apply for a patent if they have money. What's important is whether that patent is granted and whether it gets licensed. If one compares the figures, it appears the quality of the discoveries that Chinese institutions are claiming in patent applications is not very high," says Sumikura. In 2008, for example, the US patent office granted Japan nearly thirty times more patents than it granted China.
"My view is that there is still very little cutting-edge stuff," agrees Gerald Chan of the venture-capital investment group Morningside, which operates in China. "I simply do not see the truly innovative science in China that I see from North America and Europe."
"China filing more patents is good for all patent-holders, as China now has more vested interest in respecting IP," notes Chan. Indeed, according to figures from China's state intellectual-property office, litigation related to IP is increasing in the country, and reached around 30,000 cases in 2009.
Chinese applications came largely in electronics and telecommunications, biomedical and veterinary technology, and chemistry. Kevin Rivette, a managing partner at 3LP Advisors in Palo Alto, California, and former chairman of the US patent office's Patent Public Advisory Committee, says China might have success in producing new materials, where it can make clear claims of novelty, or in solar energy, grid technologies and other fields related to renewable energy, which are less mature.
Even though Chinese companies have dramatically increased their spending on R&D, says Rivette, this hasn't yet been converted into valuable intellectual property, such as international patents. He thinks the country should, in the short term, focus on buying up large amounts of intellectual property to catch up with countries with similar industry-financed expenditure on R&D — following in the footsteps of countries such as South Korea.
"International patent applications in 2009 dropped for the first time on the back of a double-digit fall in US applications - but China, with a 30% surge, claimed a bigger piece of the shrunken pie. Yet observers say the quality of Chinese applications has not kept pace with their volume, and the country still has far to go before it can establish itself as a dominant player in intellectual property."
"China Leads All Nations in Publication of Chemical Patents According to CAS, the World's Most Authoritative Publisher of Chemical Information
Columbus, Ohio (November 23, 2009) - Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), the global expert on chemical information, reports that China's patent office is now the world's leading producer of patent invention applications in chemistry. China trailed Japan's patent office, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for more than a decade, but passed the USPTO in 2005, WIPO in 2006, and exceeded Japan for the first time on a monthly basis in 2008. In 2009, China will record an entire year as the number one producer of chemical patents, and CAS projects that trend to continue.
"Chemistry is widely recognized as 'the central science,'" according to Dr. Matthew Toussant, senior vice president of editorial operations at CAS. "Chemical patents are a critical component to many industrial processes and scientific realms, including medicine and natural products," said Toussant. "In fact, on average, 35 percent of new patent invention applications involve chemical substances."
"CAS has been recording the phenomenal growth of patent documents in the last decade, with the number of chemistry-related patent publications by the USPTO and WIPO growing by more than 500 percent," said Christine McCue, vice president of marketing at CAS. "Meanwhile, Chinese invention applications increased by nearly 1,400 percent, with much of that growth taking place in the pharmaceutical sector. More than half of the Chinese patent applications during this period were from inventors within China, which surely indicates that Chinese scientists now also recognize the importance of monetizing research discoveries."
Hundreds of CAS scientists, aided by state-of-the-art technology, identify and record the chemistry obscured in patents that standard search engines cannot locate. Proprietary technology systems developed by CAS enable scientists working around the world to analyze patents from 60 global patent authorities. Patent documents meeting CAS selection criteria from nine major patent offices are available in CAS databases within two days of the patents' issuance, and are fully indexed in less than 27 days. CAS scientists add value to the data they collect, entering chemical names, a unique CAS Registry Number, literature references, property data, commercial availability, preparation details, spectra, and regulatory information from international sources into CAS databases.
"The EPO is convinced that patents could have "an even stronger impact on economic growth" once the patent system is better known in Europe and a patent culture develops similar to that of the United States."
"Daniel Dvorkin writes "In the latest example of over-the-top intellectual property demands, Russia wants licensing fees for the production of AK-47s [see newslink below]. According to first deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov, the unlicensed production of Kalashnikovs (which have been around in very nearly their current form for 60 years) in ex-Soviet Bloc countries is 'intellectual piracy.' A giant but declining power starts demanding royalties on commonly used methods and materials that are widely understood, well known, and by any reasonable standard have long been in the public domain — does this sound familiar?"
Wikipedia notes that the Izhevsk Machine Tool Factory in Russia obtained a patent on the manufacture of the AK-47 in 1999 [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK_47]."
"Russia demands halt to unlicensed production of its weapons
17:43 16/03/2007
MOSCOW, March 16 (RIA Novosti) - The production of Russian weapons in eastern Europe without licenses causes direct damage to the country's economy and interests, a first deputy prime minister said Friday.
"It is not a secret that such production is carried out in a number of eastern European countries, including NATO members," Sergei Ivanov said adding that the illegal production should be stopped.
He said this is "intellectual piracy," adding that these countries supply Russian weapons to world markets at dumping prices.
"Despite our appeals to these countries, we have received no reasonable answer," he said.
Russia says it suffers major losses from the counterfeit manufacture of Kalashnikov assault rifles in Bulgaria. The armies of 47 countries use the AK-47 assault rifle, known as the Kalashnikov after its designer, Mikhail Kalashnikov.
About 100 million AK-47s and modified versions are believed to circulate around the world, but many of them are produced illegally.
Bulgaria's Arsenal, whose license to produce Kalashnikov rifles expired a long time ago, displayed a wide range of counterfeit rifles at the DSA 2006 arms show in Malaysia.
Ivanov said earlier that the annual sales of unlicensed small arms on the international market totaled about $2 billion, with counterfeit Kalashnikov assault rifles accounting for 80-90% of the volume.
Kalashnikov producer Izhmash said that Russia accounts for only 10-12% of the million Kalashnikov rifles sold globally every year, with the rest being unlicensed copies.
It said there is no single licensing agreement conforming to international legal norms that specifically protects Russia's intellectual property rights in small arms and light weapons production.
Almost half of all NATO member countries have yet to sign intellectual property rights protection agreements with Russia, including Lithuania, Latvia, Canada, Iceland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway."
This information in this article has been extracted from: 'Su-27 Fighter: Beginning of a History' by I. Betretdinov, N. Gordukov, V. Zenkin, V. Antonov and P. Plunsky.
The technical requirements for the initial concept for a proposed fighter, starting in 1971, included the installation of an onboard 30 mm gun with firing rate of 3000 rounds per minute and an ammunition capacity of 250 rounds.
The recognised leader in the development of aircraft guns was the Tula KB of instrumentation (KBP, ex-TcseKB-14). At beginning of the 1970s only one suitable 30 mm aircraft gun was in development – the two-barrel Gast-type TKB-645 (9A623) gun. Technical data concerning the TKB-645 had been taken as the basis for the initial arrangement of the gun armament of the planned Su-27. As a result, in the final version of the technical requirement from the Soviet AF for the Su-27 fighter, approved in summer 1976, the intended onboard gun (designated AO-17А) was a two-barrel weapon with an ammunition load of 250 rounds. It was intended to supplement this by two SPPU-30 gun pods each with a flexibly-mounted GSh-301 gun (when available) and 250 rounds.
At an early stage of development, studies showed that because of the large overall dimensions and weight (115 kg) of the TKB-645, installing it in the planned location on the Su-27 would cause difficulties. [Ed: it was the same weight as the 20 mm M61A1 and somewhat more compact – the ammunition supply arrangements were also lighter and more compact.] Furthermore, the SPPU-30 gun pod, originally developed for the Su-24M bomber, was also bulky and heavy (980 kg), so unsuitable for an air superiority fighter like the Su-27.
As a result, during the initial design development of the Su-27 by Sukhoi OKB a search for an alternative gun commenced in parallel with studies on how to install the TKB-645. Specialists from the 10th Department of the OKB were in constant dialogue with the leading expert and deputy chief designer of KBP, V.P. Gryazev, and his understanding of the problems of the OKB allowed him to find a solution to the problem in the shape of the new single-barrel TKB-687 aircraft gun. One mock-up sample of gun had already been built "in metal", and this appeared promising.
The TKB-687 aircraft gun (9-A-4071, and after its service acceptance - GSh-301, i.e. Gryazev, Shipunov, 30 mm, 1 barrel), was developed in KBP to achieve the maximum ballistic and energy characteristics. In comparison with similar western aircraft guns it provided a high firing rate, was lighter and had the highest efficiency (a ratio derived from the rate of fire, the weight of the projectiles and the weight of the gun). [Ed: see this article on modern aircraft guns for more details of how their performance and efficiency compare]. It was also easy to manufacture. The following designers assisted V.P. Gryazev in the development of the GSh-301: V.N. Valuev, B.I. Kuznetcsov, E.V. Davydov, I.M. Paramonov, V.A. Kuzmin and А.М. Kalinin.
The outline drawings of the new gun were transferred to Sukhoi OKB for them to study its installation in the Su-27. It was discovered that, unlike the TKB-645, the single-barrel gun could be easily placed in the space allocated within the structure. In October 1974 an L81-T10 testbed was constructed at the OKB with a TKB-687 gun installation, in order to carry out live firing tests. For this purpose KBP supplied an experimental gun to the OKB. Bench tests were conducted on the TsceNIITOChMASh firing range by an evaluation group from the OKB. The first test was very short, consisting of only 50 shots. However, this resulted in: destruction of the testbed's aluminium skin in the area of the barrel, a crack on structural ribs and damage to the forward mounting point, and a crack on the cartridge case ejection chute (the case ejection speed was 100 m/s). It was discovered that the use of an ammunition box with vertical loading caused significant problems in stacking the ammunition load and in gun reloading.
After analysis of the test results, work commenced on remedying the defects. These included work on the gun design and on the airframe in the area of the gun installation. Simultaneously, a search for a new solution for the ammunition feed system was conducted in the Brigade of Artillery Arms headed by V.V. Doronkin. The solution was found unexpectedly as a result of studying the design of the gun installation of an F-5E fighter, captured in Vietnam and made available to the OKB. The essence of the idea was to loop the cartridge belt around guide rails. A wooden testbed provided positive results, and after further development two patents were granted."
"Chinese scientists are particularly strong on chemistry and materials engineering, both considered central to the country’s industrial development and economic future.
The number of peer-reviewed papers published by Chinese researchers rose 64-fold over the past 30 years.
China is now second only to the US in terms of academic papers published, and will take first place by 2020 if current trends continue.
It comes after last week’s announcement that China is poised to replace Japan as the world’s second largest economy, behind the US.
The boom in China’s scientific research was disclosed in an analysis of papers published in 10,500 academic journals across the world."
China will be producing more scientific research than any other country within a decade, according to an analysis of the nation’s “awe-inspiring” academic growth.
By Matthew Moore
Published: 11:22PM GMT 25 Jan 2010
Vast state investment in schools, universities and research programmes has driven the rapid growth, with academic discoveries rapidly tapped for commercial potential. Chinese scientists are particularly strong on chemistry and materials engineering, both considered central to the country’s industrial development and economic future.
The number of peer-reviewed papers published by Chinese researchers rose 64-fold over the past 30 years.
China is now second only to the US in terms of academic papers published, and will take first place by 2020 if current trends continue.
It comes after last week’s announcement that China is poised to replace Japan as the world’s second largest economy, behind the US.
The boom in China’s scientific research was disclosed in an analysis of papers published in 10,500 academic journals across the world.
The figures, compiled by the publisher Thomson Reuters for the Financial Times, showed that Chinese scientists had increased their output at a far faster rate than counterparts in rival “emerging” nations such as India, Russia and Brazil. Although India has long been tipped as the most likely threat to US academic supremacy, the study found it now lags well behind China.
India has almost been caught by Brazil in terms of the number of papers published, with researchers in the South American country leading the way in agriculture and biology. Russia has seen a relative decline in scientific research since 1981.
“China is out on its own, far ahead of the pack,” said James Wilsdon, of the Royal Society in London. Jonathan Adams, a research evaluation director at Thomson Reuters, called China’s growth “awe-inspiring” although he acknowledged that the value of the findings by its scientists were still “rather mixed”."
"China Now Ahead Of US In Patenting And Commercialization Of Bioethanol
by Staff Writers
Columbus OH (SPX) Jun 30, 2010
File image. [Corn-oil ethanol biofuel]
Chemical Abstracts Service reports that in 2009, China surpassed all other countries in the production of bioethanol patents, emerging as the global leader in the commercialization of bioethanol research.
In the CAS Chemistry Research Report: China Takes Lead in the Commercialization of Bioethanol, CAS examines 40 years of scientific research into biofuel development. Their key finding is that although U.S. researchers continue to publish more scientific research about bioethanol than other countries, China now produces more bioethanol-related patents than anyone. Other important findings include:
+ The U.S. published 105 journal articles related to first- and second-generation bioethanol research in 2009, more than any other country.
+ However, in the same year, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People's Republic of China issued the most bioethanol-related patent documents (156).
+ From 2000 to 2009, global research literature on second-generation bioethanol (derived from non-food sources, such as wheat stalks) grew 586 percent, including patenting activity that skyrocketed 2,341 percent.
+ Research into second-generation bioethanol significantly outpaced examination of first-generation (derived from edible feedstocks) and third-generation (derived from algae) bioethanol.
+ U.S. researchers are foremost within the newest category of bioethanol re third-generation, or algae-based, bioethanol.
"The global research focus on second-generation bioethanol shows a rising interest in a category of fuels widely considered more sustainable, affordable, and environmentally friendly than bioethanol available today," said Christine McCue, vice president of marketing at CAS."
The amount of Chinese patents for invention is quite limited (less than 20%), while 80% of the Chinese patents are for utility models and industrial designs. 86.6% of the Chinese patent applications for invention are filed by foreign enterprises, while the same filed by Chinese enterprises are less than 20%. The applications for patents filed by Chinese enterprises in foreign countries are also extremely limited, only taking 0.2% of the applications filed in the U.S. and 0.1% in the European Union. Further more, Chinese enterprises seldom own any patents. 99% of the Chinese enterprises do not own patents. The quality of the Chinese patents is bad too. Among all Chinese patents, most of them are in the fields of traditional Chinese medicine (98%), beverages (96%) and foods (90%). While only 7-10% of the patents are in high-tech fields, such as wireless transmission, mobile telecommunication and semiconductor .
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