"In 2008, China Company ranked first in PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) application for the first time." 654381On October 27th, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published the global patent application in 2008 on its website.
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, "Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., an international telecommunications equipment supplier headquartered in Shenzhen, China, submitted 1 737 PCT international patent applications in 2008, exceeding 1 729 of Panasonic (Japan), the second largest international patent application country, and 1 of Royal Philips Electronics Co., Ltd. of the Netherlands.
According to WIPO's historical data, in the past few years, Huawei's international patent applications and global ranking have been steadily rising-in 2006, Huawei submitted 575 patent applications, ranking13 globally; By 2007, it increased to 1365, ranking fourth in the world. It is worth noting that among the top 100 global patent applications in 2008, ZTE entered the "Top 50" for the first time, ranking 38th in the world with 329 applications.
Thanks to the performance of these two Shenzhen companies, China ranks among the top ten international patent applications for PCT since 2005, and ranks sixth in the world with 6,089 applications in 2008, surpassing the UK, with a year-on-year increase of 1 1.9%, which is much higher than the overall increase of global applications in that year.
In fact, affected by the global economic crisis, the growth rate of global patent applications slowed down in 2008. In the past three years, the number of global patent applications has maintained an average annual growth rate of 9.3%, which fell to 2.4% in 2008. According to WIPO data, on the whole, the core countries of PCT applications in 2008 are still composed of the United States, Japan and Germany, but applications from developing countries are becoming the main contributors to the incremental part of global patent applications, among which South Korea and China have the largest number of applications, and the rest are India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Mexico and Malaysia.
However, although Huawei won the "No.1 position in the world" for the first time, China enterprises as a whole are still not strong in the global patent ranking, and there are no China enterprises in other industries except Huawei and ZTE. In addition, of the 6,089 patent applications in China, 2,066 are from these two companies, accounting for more than one third of the total.
On the one hand, this is only the continuation and result of Huawei's continuous research and innovation in the past few years; On the other hand, the innovation case of Huawei (including ZTE) is still only a case in the history of independent innovation of enterprises in China. Few enterprises in China can insist on investing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in R&D every year for more than ten years like Huawei, and grow up in the fierce competition with multinational enterprises several times their own size.
In fact, Huawei's rapid rise in the patent field is directly proportional to its overall strength and global competitiveness: from 2004 to 2008, Huawei's contracted sales rose rapidly from $5.6 billion to $23.3 billion, and the proportion of overseas sales rose from 43% to 75%, with an average annual growth rate of over 40%. Moreover, the figures in 2008 were obtained in the environment of global communication equipment giants suffering from landslide, loss and reorganization. In 2007, Huawei ranked in the top five in the global communication equipment industry. If we can continue to maintain the current enterprising trend, it is not difficult to imagine hitting the "top three".
In its reply to this newspaper, Huawei said that the breakthrough of Huawei's patent application every year is based on the huge investment of R&D. "Huawei insists on investing in research and development at a cost of not less than 65,438+00% of sales revenue and 43% of employees, and 65,438+00% of R&D investment is used for research on cutting-edge technologies, core technologies and basic technologies. The research ability of cutting-edge technology, core technology and basic technology, and the ability to grasp the development trend of the industry are the basis of patents and standards. " Judging from Huawei's sales and company personnel growth in recent years, Huawei's average annual R&D investment in the last two years is at least $654.38 billion, and the number of R&D personnel has reached 40,000.
It is understood that Huawei has established R&D institutions in Stockholm, Sweden, Dallas, Silicon Valley, Bangalore, India, China, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Xi 'an, Chengdu and Wuhan, and established a complete global R&D system. Huawei Central Software Department, Shanghai Research Institute, Nanjing Research Institute and India Research Institute have all passed the highest level of international software quality management certification-CMM 5 certification.
Huawei's official data confirms that in terms of 3G patents, Huawei currently has the top five basic patents in the world; In terms of LTE(4G Long Term Evolution) patents, Huawei has become one of the three basic patent owners in the world. In other words, in the global patent competition, Huawei has jumped from a follower in the 2G era to a fellow traveler in the current global 3G, and is laying out to become a leader in 4G.
It is in this process that Huawei's right to speak in the international organization for standardization is also rising: 200 1, 1, Huawei joined ITU (International Telecommunication Union); Up to now, he has joined 9 1 international standard organizations such as GPP, 3GPP2, ETSI, IETF, OMA and IEEE, and has held more than 100 positions in these standard organizations, including vice chairman of signaling and protocol research group of ITU standardization department, vice chairman of international mobile communication (IMT) system working group of ITU radio communication department, director of Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).
In 2008 alone, Huawei submitted more than 4 100 proposals and more than 1300 proposals in the fields of optical fiber transmission, access network and next generation network. More than 2,800 proposals have been put forward in the fields of core network, business application and wireless access.
What does Huawei's victory in the patent competition mean to China? What is the role and position of China in the global patent map?
In 2008, the impact on the global economy seems to provide opportunities for the rise of developing countries, including China. Francis Ghali, Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, summed up the impact of the global economic slowdown on the number of patent applications last year, saying that historically, in times of economic difficulties, the number of patent applications tends to decline because there are fewer resources available for investment in the innovation cycle; Once the economic cycle situation improves, patent application activities will often resume; "Even so, the past economic crisis has played a catalytic role in promoting innovation, because people will pay more attention to improving efficiency standards, do more with less money, and propose smarter business methods. In the current economic environment, technology, innovation and creativity are of great significance for creating opportunities for economic recovery and coping with global pressing issues such as climate change. "
The performance of Huawei ZTE seems to be the best response to Francis Gurry: the number of PCT international patent applications of China Company increased from 1706 in 2004 to 6,089, which is the fastest growth among all countries.
In 2008, China ranked sixth, followed by the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea and France. At the same time, among the developing China countries, China has far surpassed India (766) to become a patent power in the "third world", and is tied with Brazil (45 1), South Africa (382), Turkey (367), Mexico (2 10) and Malaysia (65438).
Nevertheless, this does not mean that China's patent innovation strategy has been rising rapidly.
On the one hand, more than one third of PCT international patent applications in China come from Huawei and ZTE. Compared with the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries, China's patent applicants are still too scattered and single.
On the other hand, more importantly, there are no big companies in China that keep pace with the world in patent applications in high-tech fields such as biopharmaceuticals and new materials. According to the list of PCT international patent applications published in 2008, the fields with the largest number of applications are medical technology (accounting for 12.0%), computer technology (accounting for 8.5%) and medical field (accounting for 7.9%), and the fastest growing technical fields are information technology (up 22.7%) and microstructure and nanotechnology (up 20.7%). Although China has been able to perform strongly in "information technology" due to the rapid rise of Huawei and ZTE, other fields are still lacking.
At the beginning of 2008, China National Intellectual Property Administration, China summarized China's overall situation in global patent breakthrough and overall innovation strategy with "a single enterprise is outstanding but lacks the advantages of cluster".
In fact, in 2007, when Huawei and ZTE jumped to the fourth and 52nd place respectively in the PCT global patent application list, China National Intellectual Property Administration reminded us that only Huawei and ZTE ranked among the top in the world in terms of the number of PCT applications in China, while Huawei alone accounted for half of the total PCT applications in China, and the other companies published less than 30 in 2007, ranking outside the world's 500. The United States and Japan have 19 and 13 enterprises respectively, ranking among the top 50 in the world. (2 1 Century Business Herald Qiu)