According to the European Patent Office on Wednesday, Huawei’s number of patent applications in Europe ranks first in the total number of patent applications filed by European companies worldwide, making it the first Chinese company to receive this honor.
In 2017, Huawei applied for 2,398 patents from the European Patent Office, leaving Siemens, LG Group, Samsung, Qualcomm and other international technology giants behind.
The top 10 companies in Europe for patent applications in 2017. Photo source: European Patent Office
According to data from the European Patent Office, Chinese companies’ applications for patents in 2017 increased by 16.6% compared to 2016, much higher than the 3.9% average growth rate of patent applications filed by European companies in Europe.
In 2017, Chinese companies submitted a total of 8,330 patent applications to the European Patent Office, ranking fifth in European patent applications worldwide, second only to the United States, Germany, Japan, and France. The United States ranked first and filed a total of 42,300 patents. European patents The Bureau received about 166,000 patent applications throughout the year.
Other top Chinese companies on the list include ZTE, Xiaomi, Alibaba, BYD, and Haier.
In the past five years, the number of patent applications filed by the European Patent Office in China has been steadily increasing. Image credit: European Patent Office
Huawei launched the P10 and P10 Plus smart phones equipped with artificial intelligence systems in Europe last year. It is popular among European consumers, and BYD's zero-emission buses have also been shuttled to London, Amsterdam, Turin, Oslo, and other European cities. .
Song Liuping, Huawei’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, stated: “Huawei is a technological innovation company and it places great emphasis on R&D investment. Therefore, the generation of intellectual property rights is a natural result and our core competitiveness. At the same time, patent registration is also a measure of our global competition. An important indicator of force. ' At present, Huawei's R&D team has more than 80,000 people, accounting for 45% of the total number of employees.
Song Liuping explained that a seemingly compact Huawei P10 smart phone may involve several thousand technologies, including wireless communication technology, display technology, and chip underlying technology. Behind these technologies is the support of patents.
Similarly, a BYD new energy vehicle, which involves the battery, electronic systems, materials, and public transportation cloud technology will be applied for patent protection around the world. Wei Song, the manager of BYD's intellectual property department, stated, 'We decide which technologies and patents need to be protected in Europe based on products and markets. As we push more new generation products to the European market, our patent applications in Europe are also Will increase accordingly. '
The top ten countries in which the number of companies applying for patents in Europe was ranked in 2017. Source: European Patent Office
Professor Xiaotao Xu, Director of the Technology Management Development Center of Oxford University pointed out that the growth of patent applications by Chinese-funded enterprises in Europe reflects the innovation of Chinese-funded enterprises, the awareness of Chinese intellectual property protection, and the international development of Chinese-funded enterprises. She said that this trend also reflects the Chinese government's efforts to encourage innovation and development and intellectual property protection.