Top Patentees in China for 2020
Wednesday, January 20, 2021

According to an analysis by Incopat, corporate applicants accounted for about 67% of Chinese invention patents in 2020, among which Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.’s  is by far the leader. College and university patentees accounted for about 22% with Zhejiang University continuing to rank number 1 for invention patents.  The top foreign corporate patentee was Samsung Electronics at #9. The top American corporate patentee was Qualcomm at #16.

Huawei remains the top patentee in 2020 while Alibaba makes the biggest jump upward from 2019 from 14 to 8. Intel fell off the list in 2020 and Qualcomm dropped 11 in 2019 to 16 in 2020.

Top 20 Corporate Patentees in China for 2020 (not normalized)

2020 Rank

2019 Rank

Corporation

2020 Patents

1

1

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

6393

2

4

OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co. Ltd.

3580

3

3

Sinopec

2921

4

5

BOE Technology Co., Ltd.

2882

5

6

Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd.

2812

6

9

Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliance Co., Ltd.

2677

7

2*

State Grid Corporation (国家电网公司)

2498

8

14

Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.

2098

9

7

Samsung Electronics

1824

10

13

Vivo Mobile Communications Co., Ltd.

1686

11

8

Midea

1675

12

2*

State Grid Corporation of China

 

(国家电网有限公司)

1616

13

12

ZTE Corporation

1354

14

 

Beijing Xiaomi Mobile Software Co., Ltd.

1337

15

10

Lenovo (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

1166

16

11

Qualcomm Corporation

1158

17

17

Mitsubishi Electric Co., Ltd.

1156

18

15

Toyota Motor Corporation

1035

19

 

China Mobile

996

20

20

SMIC

978

* State Grid patents were normalized in 2019 leading to a higher ranking. 

The top 3 IPC classifications for 2020 patents were G06 (calculation; calculation; counting), H04 (electric communication technology), and G01 (measurement; testing).  

G06 Top Patentees

Rank

Patentee

2020 Patents

1

Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

1597

2

Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.

1464

3

OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd.

1343

4

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

1004

5

Lenovo (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

698

6

Vivo Mobile Communications Co., Ltd.

691

7

Tsinghua University

630

8

State Grid Corporation

570

9

Zhejiang University

566

10

Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics

 562

H04 Top Patentees

Rank

Patentee

2020 Patents

1

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

4880

2

OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd.

2086

3

Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

1289

4

ZTE Corporation

1138

5

Vivo Mobile Communications Co., Ltd.

970

6

Litong Co., Ltd.

856

7

Samsung Electronics

811

8

Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.

789

9

China Mobile

786

10

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

654

Chinese Patentees by Country

China was the largest patentee of Chinese patents in 2020 with Japan, United States, Germany and South Korea following.  Cayman Islands also made a showing in the top 10, perhaps because many Chinese companies form holding companies there.

Rank

Country

2020 Chinese Patents

1

China

440696

2

Japan

28955

3

US

21089

4

Germany

9397

5

Korea

9311

6

France

2949

7

Cayman Islands

2722

8

Switzerland

2352

9

Netherlands

1957

10

Sweden

1451

11

Other

9249

Note that official 2020 patent statistics have not yet been released. We’ll report on it in the next few days but we expect a tremendous increase in all three types of Chinese patent filings in 2020 versus 2019 despite the pandemic.

 

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