Who Are the Top Grantees of Chinese Invention Patents in 2019?

According to an annual report by Incopat, Huawei had the most Chinese invention patents granted in 2019 with 4525 patents.  Huawei also had a significant number of US utility patents granted – 2,418 patents putting Huawei in the #10 spot for U.S. patents in 2019 per a study by  IFI Claims Patent Services. The top foreign corporate patent grantee in China for 2019 was Samsung Electronics with 1966 patents in the #7 spot.  Samsung is #2 in the U.S. in 2019, just behind IBM.  The top US corporate grantee in China was Qualcomm at #11 with 1,592 patents in 2019.

The list of top Chinese corporate patent grantees follows:

1. Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 4525
2. State Grid Corporation 4150
3. China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) 2951
4. OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. 2620
5. BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd. 2546
6. Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. 2169
7. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. 1966
8. Midea Group Co., Ltd. 1814
9. Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. 1800
10. Lenovo (Beijing) Co. Ltd. 1709
11. Qualcomm Technologies Inc. 1592
12. ZTE Corporation Ltd. 1478
13. Vivo Mobile Communications Ltd. 1390
14. Alibaba Group Co., Ltd. 1251
15. Toyota Motor Corporation 1222
16. LG Electronics Corporation 1190
17. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation 1121
18. Robert Bosch GmbH 1089
19. Intel 1006
20. SMIC 989

The top International Patent Classifications (IPCs) in 2019 for granted Chinese invention patents were H04 (Electric Communication Technique)  with 55,703 patents and G06 (Computing, Calculating or Counting) with 50,499 patents. G01 (Measuring, Testing), H01 (Basic Electric Elements) and A61 (Medical or Veterinary Science; Hygiene) rounded out the top 5.

The list of top Chinese patent grantees in H04 follows:

1. Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 3409
2. Oppo Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. 1391
3. ZTE Corporation Ltd. 1278
4. Qualcomm 1139
5. Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. 1023
6. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. 874
7. Vivo Mobile Communications Ltd. 778
8. LG Electronics Corporation 751
9. China Mobile Communications Corporation 616
10. Sony Corporation 616

The list of top Chinese patent grantees in G06 follows:

1. Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. 1174
2. Lenovo (Beijing) Co., Ltd. 1030
3. OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. 1025
4. Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. 817
5. Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 726
6. State Grid Corporation 607
7. Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. 556
8. Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC 536
9. Vivo Mobile Communications Ltd. 533
10. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. 514

In terms of distribution of mainland Chinese patentees, there is a gradual decreasing trend from the coastal East to the interior West with the top provinces/administrative regions being Guangdong, Beijing and Jiangsu.

Chinese universities are also becoming big filers with Zhejiang University ranked in the top 20 of all patent grantees with 2325 invention patents granted in 2019. Tsinghua and Southeast University came in second and third in university grants.

Note that names aren’t normalized so there may be subsidiaries or affiliates of the corporate entities listed having patents granted that are not calculated in the totals above.

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