Taiwan drops one spot to become the world's fourth-largest cumulative foreign holder at 162,732 USPTO patents.
For 2015, Taiwan is passed by South Korea. Taiwan becomes the world's fourth-largest cumulative foreign holder of 162,732 USPTO (ie. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) patents during the last 39 years. Essentially, Taiwan is out-innovating every other country on the planet except for the United States, Japan, Germany, and South Korea. This would explain Taiwan's ever-increasing standards of living and foreign exchange reserves.
Patent Counts By Country, State, and Year - All Patent Types (December 2015)
A. Taiwan's cumulative USPTO patents are clearly massive in terms of quantity. However, we have to examine the quality of the Taiwanese patents. This can be done indirectly and easily by mentioning ten large leading Taiwanese companies in diverse industries.
1. TSMC (or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is the world leader in the foundry business with 50% worldwide market share. TSMC logic chip technology is currently being mass produced at a leading-edge 16nm FinFET.
2. Mediatek is a leading multi-billion dollar designer of systems-on-chip (SOC) for smartphones and tablets.
3. Quanta and Compal produce 80-90% of the world's notebook computers with Taiwanese patents.
4. AU Optronics is a leading LCD manufacturer. AU Optronics won a monstrous patent lawsuit against South Korea's LG where a U.S. Federal District Court ruled that LG infringed on four key AU Optronics patents.
5. Epistar is a leading LED manufacturer with 1,000 LED patents.
6. Formosa Plastics is a leading manufacturer of specialty chemicals.
7. Taiwan is the world's fourth-largest machine tool exporter and has built a sub-micron CNC machine tool.
8. "Delta Electronics, Inc. (Chinese: 台達電子工業股份有限公司), founded in 1971, is the world's largest provider of switching power supplies and DC brushless fans,[1] as well as a major source for power management solutions, components, visual displays, industrial automation, networking products, and renewable energy solutions. Delta Group has sales offices worldwide and manufacturing plants in Taiwan, China, Thailand, Mexico, India and Europe."
9. "In Taiwan, which has the second-largest chip-design industry after the U.S., Novatek is a standout. Chairman Ho Tai-shung has turned it from a little spinoff of United Microelectronics (the Taiwanese chipmaker that is the world's second-largest foundry, behind only neighbor and rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing) into a chip-design powerhouse. Novatek, based in Taiwan's premier high-tech zone, the Hsinchu science park, is the island's dominant provider of TFT-LCD driver and controller chips, key components in the liquid crystal displays used in PC monitors and TV screens." (from BusinessWeek)
10. "Largan is the world’s biggest designer and manufacturer of imaging lens products used in mobile devices." (from Bloomberg News)
B. 60% of mainland Chinese high-tech exports are being conducted by Taiwanese companies. This means mainland China still relies on Taiwanese patents to expand its economy. With over 70,000 Taiwanese companies and one million Taiwanese residents, it is business as usual on mainland China.
C. Mainland China produces its own USPTO patents that is about 3/4 of the total number of Taiwanese USPTO patents on an annual basis. With $3.2 trillion dollars in foreign exchange reserves and its own USPTO patents, China's continued industrialization is unstoppable. It's nice to have Taiwanese companies, but they are no longer indispensable.
China has its own long list of corporate titans: Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, PetroChina, Xiaomi, Alibaba, Baidu, SMIC, Haier, SAIC Motor, etc.
D. Since Taiwan has a small population of 23 million people, it proves that any country with over 20 million in population has the ability to industrialize based on its own innovation and USPTO patents.
E. However, Taiwan is a rare success story. Theoretically speaking, economics is not a zero-sum game. Thus, a developing country's economy should take off with currently undiscovered inventions. Practically speaking, it is difficult to identify a new economic sector that could produce billions of dollars in profits.
In conclusion, the story of Taiwan serves as an interesting model for developing countries. Taiwan proved that you can bootstrap your own economy into becoming a developed country. Hence, it is interesting to keep monitoring the USPTO patents every year to see if there is a breakout country on the cusp of joining the industrialized world.
