Global Crisis/Innovation Blog

China Patents A New Direction in Patents

By Shlomo Maital

   In this blog, I have consistently argued that China is fiercely determined to move up the value-chain ladder into the realm of innovation-intensive products and services, and is acting aggressively to implement this policy.

    Writing in today’s International Herald Tribune,  Steve Lohr [“Building a more innovative society by government decree”,  IHT Jan 3/2011, p. 14] reports on a Chinese government document defining goals for drastically raising China’s production of patents.  US PTO’s David J. Kappos, the Director, says the Chinese targets for 2015 are ‘mind blowing numbers’.

    China’s goal for annual patent filings by 2015 is … two million, including ‘utility-model patents’ or design patents,  which cover items like engineering features and are less ambitious than invention patents.  In contrast, in 2009, there were about 300,000 applications filed for utility patents, about equal to the total of invention patents. 

   Patent filings in the U.S. totaled about 480,000 in the year up to September 30. 

   China’s patent surge has been evident for many years.  China has been expected to overtake the U.S. in patents this year, but it has happened faster than expected, Lohr reports.

   China is not only ambitious for Chinese patents.  It wants to double the number of patents that its residents and companies file in other countries.  Chinese filings in the US PTO are soaring, and are focused on strategic areas China finds crucial, such as solar and wind energy, information technology, telecommunications, battery and manufacturing technologies for automobiles. 

    China’s government is offering incentives, including cash bonuses, better housing for individual filers, and tax breaks for companies that are prolific patent appliers.

     Creativity expert John Kao told Lohr that “one day China will have the Chinese entrepreneurial equivalent of Steven P. Jobs of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.”

     Kao takes comfort in the fact that American culture, more than any other, forgives failure, tolerates risk and embraces democracy.    I wonder when America will begin taking seriously the ominous challenge “Made in China” poses for America’s wealth and wellbeing.