In a First, China Knocks US From Top Spot in Global Patent Race (reuters.com) 55
China was the biggest source of applications for international patents in the world last year, pushing the United States out of the top spot it has held since the global system was set up more than 40 years ago, the U.N. patent agency said on Tuesday. From a report: The World Intellectual Property Organization, which oversees a system for countries to share recognition of patents, said 58,990 applications were filed from China last year, beating out the United States which filed 57,840. China's figure was a 200-fold increase in just 20 years, it said. The United States had filed the most applications in the world every year since the Patent Cooperation Treaty system was set up in 1978. More than half of patent applications -- 52.4 % -- now come from Asia, with Japan ranking third, followed by Germany and South Korea. [...] According to the WIPO data, China's Huawei, the world's biggest maker of telecoms equipment, was the top corporate patent filer for the third consecutive year.
International Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:International Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Ultimately Patents were supposed to be a way to ensure that domain specific knowledge was transferred, essentially a price paid by society for technology eventually to the public domain, in return for temporary exclusivity. So it's actually far more important to know if these "Patents" are actually new knowledge and technology, or just speculative paper. In the US Patent system the key words are "sufficiently explained for someone skilled in the art to reproduce the work" - in other words the Patent is supposed to tell you everything you need to know to build the gadget/design/process. All of that actually requires the prior knowledge of what's been done before and what is state-of-the-art so one would expect that even in the presence of valid enforceable patents, they still serve that purpose by being research material for anyone the patents are disclosed to. One of my favorite mentors (a US Patent attorney) pointed out to me several decades that people rarely read the patent database as a textbook, but if the patents are following the rules, you absolutely could!!
From my limited exposure to the patent database, there's a marked difference between patents before mid 90s (when "Software Patents" started to gain momentum) and current filings, at least in the hardware and systems domain, so quality has been generally trending away from actually useful knowledge, and many corporate patent mill processes want to file for "IP" protection without really caring about the essential spirit of Patents. Perhaps it's different in bio-science (although I doubt it)? Either way there's nothing exceptional about China gaming the system to file massive number of "junk" over-broad and speculative patents, many US companies do this. Evidence - the "one click" patents... So again, if China is spending money filing junk that will not more than patent trolling, well we've survived that here in the US although it's not ideal, and if they are actually creating novel techniques and knowledge, everyone gains.
The real question beyond patents will be if there are some critical mass tipping points in underlying base technologies, best example is our manufacturing base in plastics, the fabrication of "melt blown fiber" synthetic materials needed for N95 masks is an example of a basic chemical and mechanical process absolutely essential to production of safety equipment. Our supply chain in the western world is about to get shaken very hard as every possible mask production factory looks for source of this essential raw material and only factories that maintain the feedstocks (betch'ya its petroleum!) and the necessary machinery to process the feedstocks to the final materials (which are necessary energy intensive and potentially polluting). If we offshored _all_ of that equipment then getting that mask making production line is nearly impossible in a short order, and the knowledge of the skilled operators of the processing systems has to be found somewhere in a book, or perhaps old Patents?
So not scary, not even really a bad thing, unless we're stupid enough to throw out every machine and tear down every factory that could be used for these processes.
Re: International Patents (Score:1)
Companies avoid letting their designers read the patent database because it "corrupts" their unique designs.
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I've heard that again and again, but I've never had a single manager or company policy explicitly tell me to avoid the patent database, nor have I ever heard a practicing IP lawyer make that statement. To the contrary all of the IP lawyers I have worked with (and I have myself secured 5 US Patents) say that the USPTO database is a "gold mine".
The only item I know of that's common in industry practice (again US domestic viewpoint here) is that companies regularly express in the NDAs and employment agreements
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And hey, it's not like our govt. and companies aren't helping the Chinese at this very exercise with the lax rules and all we've had over the past couple decades, not to mention moving all our manufacturing over there.
And also having to make China "partners" when setting up business over there, what do you expect?
Re:International Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is respecting nobody's patents. US patent office grants patents for trivial things that everyone does. US corporations like IBM, Google, Apple, Microsoft, AMD, etc are sitting on hundreds of thousands of patents and are infringing on each other patents on daily basis. Patent portfolios exist now to prevent companies from suing each other.
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Nobody is respecting nobody's patents.
So everyone is respecting everyone's patents?
US patent office grants patents for trivial things that everyone does.
I always remember seeing something several years ago about a patent for a tire swing. As in tying a rope to a tree branch and tire.
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The USA didn't respect others patents [eh.net], but expects others to respect their patents. USA having patents is the biggest joke on earth.
The USA has moved from patent violator to patent troll, expect China to move down the same path.
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Yes, because what happened over 200 years ago is a GREAT indicator of current legal and cultural norms!
How are your slaves doing, and is the wife still being obedient to you? Have you powdered your wig recently?
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Yes, because what happened over 200 years ago is a GREAT indicator of current legal and cultural norms!
Why is it that what the USA is practicing now has to be the "norm" and "law" and not that of some other country's current practice being the "norm"? Your definition of the "norm" is taken from the dictionary of the bullies.
And as a country which prints "In God We Trust" [wikipedia.org] on its currency, maybe you should apologize and make retribution to your Original Sin [wikipedia.org] rather than launching an attack on the same issue. That's called the practice of hypocrisy -- I guess that's also the "norm" nowaday.
Of course, patent tro
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The "norm" and more specifically "law", unfortunately, are defined by power, especially in the international stage. That's the only reason the US is trying so hard to claim down on China now -- because China is the number 2 superpower capable of competing against the USA.
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First, sorry, in this world, it is not about what "should" but what "will" happen.
Second, why should the USA, a country founded by invasions (of North America, Mexico, Hawaii), built by slave labors, stole massive amount of technologies, and violated human rights left and right, and launched endless wars on fraudulent excuses, be the norm?
Third, why shouldn't China, a country that has not invaded anyone in the last 100 years and lifted 1.4 billion people out of adjunct poverty, be the norm?
Four, why would
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So did Germany, 'Made in Germany' in fact was meant as a stigma to warn British consumers of German copycats products. Things changed and German products found better appreciation, later US products did and now is the time to reevaluate the perception of Chinese products.
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I have a caliper that says "Made in W. Germany" on it, it's older than I am.
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I believe that everything copyrighted in China should be public domain everywhere else until they learn to respect copyrights.
China's Huawei, (Score:1)
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Well, it seems they are actually turning a profit - https://www.marketwatch.com/st... [marketwatch.com] so it looks like your explanation of the phenomenon is a tad incomplete.
Huge (Score:4, Funny)
But we have the best patents. Tremendous, beautiful patents. Our patents have the highest ratings, unlike the loser Chinese patents.
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It probably works. The patent officers don't bother to search their own databases, let alone google for claims in patent applications.
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Article is meaningless (Score:1)
Without knowing what the patents are for this is just an arbitrary benchmark with no meaning.
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The article doesn't state what the patents are for. A particular color? The roundness of a button?
AFAIK, you can't patent those. They could be industrial designs however.
The idea of a shopping cart?
You can't patent an idea either.
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Re: Article is meaningless (Score:1)
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Not surprising. Expect more. (Score:5, Interesting)
China has four times the population of the US, and has been gunning for us for years. The US has to file more than 4x as many patents as China to stay ahead.
Meanwhile US patent volume is highly dependent on immigrants -- we have an astonishing number of immigrants who hold patents. Between 2000 and 2010, 190,000 immimgrants came to the US who ended up named on patents (https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.30.4.83). China over the same period gained a paltry 4300 immigrant inventors. The number of immigrant inventors in the US is greater than the next 25 countries combined. About 3/4 of university-filed patents come from immigrant patent holders.
US policy has turned decisively against immigration. According to the Cato Institute, green card wait times have gone from three years in 1991 to six years today, which in turn has a decisive effect on candidates with advanced degrees deciding to go home, which the libertarian think tank believes will reduce the rate new patents and startups in the US (source [cato.org]).
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" About 3/4 of university-filed patents come from immigrant patent holders."
And lots of them have Chinese names.
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Well, one problem is, that you have a ton of people, for some reason (mostly on the left) that scream bloody murder if you start trying to implement merit based immigration, much like other western countries do....
And for the most part, I'd say mot people in the US don't have a problem with immigration. We don't want it unregulated, and we at least ask they sign the fucking guest book on the way in, you know?
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The US is one of the only nations on the Earth with a lottery program for immigration.
Likely because this costs less than hiring - and paying - people to actually evaluate applications.
Merit is really not part of the equation for the VAST majority of the over 1 million immigrants to the US each year
Another large contributor is that some elements of the far left are opposed to a merit based application system.
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Another large contributor is that some elements of the far left are opposed to a merit based application system.
The far left knows that "university degree" as a requirement will recognize universities in England, but not India and China, and most merit systems have a racist-ish language requirement (that lets in non-speakers/poor speakers from white countries). If a merit based system weren't inherently racist, the far left would support it more.
Likely because this costs less than hiring - and paying - people to actually evaluate applications.
Odd, the countries with a merit system generally set fees to cover the costs of administering it, so it ends up costing less than a lottery system.
In practice, the US syste
6? More like 60 for many (Score:2)
Yup, 60 years for country of birth is India. EB2 current year is 2009. It hasn't moved at all for past few years.
USPTO is to blame (Score:2)
They have a massive backlog and it takes a year for them to even look at the application. I've had patent examiners come back and tell us to split patents into two or three so that it would reduce his/her workload.
We need better! (Score:2)
China is rising... (Score:2)
in spite of all the efforts to stifle it by the US.
A long time coming but we all know that that is inevitable; just cut the hate/disinformation on both sides and get on with life guys.
Trump will not let them Patent the cure or order i (Score:1)
Trump will not let them Patent the cure or order it made in USA by order of law so they can't be sued.
To be fair... (Score:2)
...25% at least were stolen from US servers, so, should sort of be shared credit, no?
We gutted higher education (Score:2)
What does a "patent" even mean? (Score:1)
Nowadays, most patents seem to be utter bullshit, and only made "just in case", to harass others with, later on.
Also ... "race"?
It's not a race! Everyone is not your enemy. We are humans. We're not lizards. (Or are you?)
Granted, patents are inherently harmful, because they disconnect the effort put in from the effort that can be be price-gouged out of the world (that is: us) with its artificial scarcity monopoly. Instead of a healthy market where the client has a say too, and can pick someone else for the s
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You do have choices you know.
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Yet Communist China like the world to see its patent numbers...
It is a number per year Communist China likes to be seen with.
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We're not lizards. (Or are you?)
We're all lizards. Just some of us won't admit it.
Patent numbers don't mean much (Score:2)
Where are the patents being filed? Are Chinese patents being filed in China or abroad? Are the filings mostly being granted? And mostly importantly, are the patents useful? Most patents are either impractical, obvious, prior art, or black-box utility descriptions, i.e., not useful. Obvious, prior art, and black-box patents are supposedly not allowed but in reality constitute a large portion of patents.
A few of filed or granted patents are useful. Aggregate patent numbers are just trophies to be touted
Jian Yang.... (Score:2)
What about qualitative standards? (Score:2)
While I'm unsure if this can be measured, there are useful and junky patents, and at least in the US you can even file for and receive patents for inventions that do not correspond to known laws of science, although they are marked as such.
good news! (Score:2)
expect patent reform soon.