IPR Trends Q4 2015: Patent and Trademark Statistics

A.Patent Applications
1.The number of new applications for all three types of patents came down by 2.25% to 20,171 cases.
2.Applications for invention (12,390) and utility model (5,682) patents decreased by 0.6% and 6.76%, respectively. Design (2,099) applications, conversely, grew by 1.11% (Table 1).
3.The number of invention applications (5,198) filed by residents dropped by 5.18%, whereas those filed by non-residents (7,192) went up by 2.99% (Table 1).
4.Breakdown by country, Japan (3,081) topped the list, followed by the US (2,046), South Korea (449), China (402), and Germany (342) (Fig.1).
5.The top five domestic corporations applying for invention patents were Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) (333), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) (291), Inventec (181), Metal Industries Research & Development Center (MIRDC) (118), Acer (89). Hon Hai (83) and AU Optronics (74), however, dropped a few notches to the 6th and 8th place, respectively (Fig.2).
6.As for foreign corporations, Intel (393) topped the list, followed by Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (104), Tokyo Electron (98), Nitto Denko (91), and Applied Materials (90) (Fig.2).
7.Invention applications filed by domestic corporations (3,373) and individual applicants (614) were down by 8.71% and 7.53%, respectively. Conversely, those filed by universities (591) were up by 4.60%, with Far East University (76) topping the list. Domestic research institutes (620) also saw growth by 11.11% and took up 3 seats in the top ten (Table 3, Fig. 2, Fig.3).

B.Patent Grants
1.The number of patent grants for all three types of patents increased by 2.73% at 20,469 cases (Table 4).
2.Patent grants for invention (13,235) and design (2,032) increased by 6.57% and 10.43%, respectively. However, patent grants for utility model (5,202) decreased by 8.21% (Table 4).
3.The number of invention patents granted to residents (5,867) and non-residents (7,368) went up by 2.11% and 10.42%, respectively (Table 4).
4.Breakdown by country, Japan (3,259) came out on top, followed by the US (2,142), South Korea (489), China (355), and Germany (295) (Fig.4).
5.In the number of granted invention patents, the top five domestic corporations were Hon Hai (462), ITRI (189), Wistron (153), AU Optronics (128), and TSMC (125) (Fig.5). The top five foreign corporations were Intel (239), Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (174), Apple (123), Tokyo Electron (119), Toshiba (86), and Qualcomm (86) (Fig.5).

C.Trademark Applications
1.The number of new applications for trademark grew by 7.32% to 20,516 cases (Table 1), a record high since Q4 2000.
2.The number of domestic and foreign applications totaled at 15,034 (+6.40%) and 5,482 (+9.95%) cases, respectively (Table 1).
3.Breakdown by country, Japan (1,011) came out on top, followed by China (929), the US (921), Hong Kong (320), and Germany (284) (Fig.3).
 

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