Patent Filing: Beijing’s Latest Directive 专利申请：政府最新指导

By newsdoug on March 7, 2012

China fixates on patents It seems Beijing has decided China’s companies need to innovate more and has instructed them to do so, resulting in a flood of new patents for Chinese companies and other entities that I suspect are worth little more than the paper they’re printed on. That’s my major conclusion for why the nation’s regional governments and companies are suddenly flooding the media with reports showing off how many new patents they’ve received, as all vie to comply with Beijing’s silly innovation directive. According to new statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization, patent applications rose 10 percent globally last year, but China’s rise was 3 times that much at 33 percent. (English article) Chinese telecoms giant ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063) pushed aside Japan’s Panasonic (Tokyo: 6752) to take the crown for the individual company with the most patent applications, filing for a hefty 2,826 patents versus 2,463 for Panasonic. ZTE’s crosstown rival Huawei also was busy at the patent office, filing 1,831 applications to finish third among individual companies. ZTE even put out a press release to publicize its accomplishment, adding that more than 60 percent of its filings were related to 3G, 4G, the Internet of things and cloud computing, all areas of the future. (company announcement) Meantime, one Chinese media report saw authorities from Jiangsu province congratulating themselves for seeing nearly 200,000 patents granted in their territory last year, with more than 348,000 applications filed — the biggest total for any individual province. (English article) I don’t want to be too cynical here, but am I the only one who sees all these numbers and self congratulation as a bit too loud and aimed at capturing the attention of Beijing central planners who have ordered this ongoing campaign to innovate more? I think it would be far more interesting to see how useful any of these patents are, rather than just looking at the number of actual patents, although obviously patent usefulness is far more difficult to quantify than simple figures. I do find it a bit ironic that ZTE, despite saying how hard it is working to develop new technologies like 3G, 4G and cloud computing, seems to be focusing the majority of its effort these days on becoming a top global name in low cost smartphones. Maybe they should be talking about how many patents they’ve received on that front, which could be far more important to their future than more abstract things like cloud computing and the Internet of things, which are most likely still a long way from becoming profitable business lines.

Bottom line: Beijing’s directive for more innovation is causing Chinese companies and government officials to pay too much attention to patents instead of real innovation.

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)