Taiwan IPO releases statistics of patent applications and grants for 2017

　Taiwan IPO released the statistics of patent applications filed and patent grants in 2017.  Among the overall applications for all three kinds of patents (applications for invention, utility model, and design patents), TSMC tops the list of applications filed by local firms with 937 applications, while China’s Alibaba Group heads the list of those filed by foreign entities with 762 applications.  As to the ranking of grants of all three kinds of patents, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. and Intel each claimed the top honor on the list of patent grants to domestic and foreign applicants with 756 grants and 968 grants, respectively.  

　According to the TIPO’s statistics, TSMC is the domestic applicant that has been filing more and more applications to reach its record high number in 2017 and remain at No. 1 position.  At the same time, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. outnumbered Industrial Technology Research Institute with 485 patent applications to bounce back to No. 2 in 2017.  MediaTek Inc. (349 applications) and Microjet Technology (251 applications) saw their respective increase by 6 and 1.5 times year on year, thus joining the top 10 list.  Far East University was the only university named on the top 10 list with 205 applications.  On the list of applications filed by foreign companies, China-based Alibaba Group filed a total of 762 applications, seeing its nearly 6 times yearly growth to head the list for the first time, and showing its aggressive patent deployment in Taiwan.  The third place went to US-based Qualcomm Inc. which filed 604 applications and saw its growth at 48%.  Besides, Guang Dong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications came in at No. 7 with 323 applications, representing an 11% growth and making its debut on the top 10 ranking.   

　TIPO conducted analysis by the structure of the overall patent applications filed in 2017.  The result shows that local business entities are mainly responsible for Taiwan’s innovative force and most of the 2017 applications were filed for invention patents with an yearly increase by 24% in invention patent applications and by 21% in utility model patent applications.  (February 2018) 

/CCS