The main line
China is far outpacing international rivals in the global race to generate AI patents, a new United Nations report found on Thursday, leaving the United States and other nations far behind as they vie for strategic advantage and leadership over transformative technology.
China’s patents don’t mean it’s winning the AI race, an expert told Forbes.
Key facts
China has filed more than 38,000 patents for AI-generating inventions since 2014, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN agency responsible for overseeing the international recognition of patents and other matters.
Generative AI is AI software capable of generating output such as text, images, video, and sound in response to a request, and generative AI inventions include chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Claude Anthropic, image generators such as Adobe’s Firefly, and even tools scientific like AIs of protein structure. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, FrameDiff and Google DeepMind, AlphaFold.
The figure, which does not take into account other forms of AI such as autonomous driving, reveals that China has filed more patents for inventions involving generative AI than all other countries combined, accounting for 70% of the more than 50,000 of patents filed globally over the past decade. .
The US, with nearly 6,300 patents filed since 2014, remains a distant second, less than a sixth of China’s total, with South Korea (4,155), Japan (3,409) and India (1,350) in third, fourth and fifth place. respectively, followed by the UK (714), Germany (708), Canada (549) and Israel (311).
While the large number of patents certainly indicates strengths in China’s research and development capacity, Van Anh Le, an assistant professor of intellectual property law at Durham University in the UK, told Forbes that it “doesn’t tell the whole story history”.
“The quantity of patents does not necessarily reflect their quality or the impact of innovations,” Le said, explaining that many of them may be of “low importance” or represent “incremental improvements rather than breakthroughs.”
Crucial quotes
“In the context of AI, there is an undeniable competition between China and the US,” Le said, describing China as “a formidable competitor.” But patent data only paints part of the picture, Le pointed out. “To get a more comprehensive understanding, we need to look at other indicators, such as startup activity, which can signify the health of the innovation ecosystem,” as well as the rate at which patents are commercialized. Taking this broader perspective as it applies to AI, Le said the US has a “strong innovation environment,” pointing to the many AI startups emerging from there.
Which companies have the most AI patents?
Globally, Chinese giants Tencent, Ping An Insurance Group and Baidu own the most generating AI patents so far, WIPO said, each holding many times more patents than the other occupants of the top ten global money list. Chinese entities account for six of the top ten holders of generative AI patents globally during the period covered, WIPO said, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences notable as the only research organization in the top ten. IBM, which comes in fifth globally, holds the most of any US company.
Top 10 Generating AI Patent Holders Globally
- Tencent Holdings (2,074)
- Ping An Insurance Group (1,564)
- Baidu (1234)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (607)
- IBM (601)
- Alibaba (571)
- Samsung Electronics (468)
- Alphabet/Google (443)
- Bytedance (418)
- Microsoft (377)
What to look for
Generative AI accounts for only 6% of global AI patents, but the number of new filings has accelerated rapidly in recent years, WIPO said. More than a quarter of generative AI patents were filed in 2023 alone, for example, a year that also accounted for nearly half of generative AI scientific publications. WIPO said video and image data dominate generative AI patents, with about 18,000 inventions, followed by inventions for text (13,494) and speech and music (13,480). Generative AI can be deployed in a wide range of sectors, and WIPO said it could in the future help design new drugs, power customer service chatbots and improve product design and autonomous driving. In particular, the life sciences appear set for a change, WIPO predicts, with the number of GenAI patents using molecule-, gene- and protein-based data “growing rapidly” in recent years at an average rate annual growth of 78% over the last five years. .
Key background
While generative AI has been around for years, interest and adoption of the technology has grown rapidly. The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT assistant in 2022 marked a particular turning point, starting a global race among companies developing and deploying AI tools. McKinsey estimates that the growing AI generative economy could add up to $4.4 trillion a year in value to the global economy, meaning that controlling key inventions with patents can be very lucrative. There are also strategic advantages to the technology, and global powers such as the US and China have made its control overriding national priorities.
ANTI
It’s not just AI patents that China is pushing ahead with, said Le, who explained that China has outpaced the US in patent filings across the board for years. While the high number of patents is indicative of research capacity, high investment and technological capabilities, there are other ways to explain the trend, Le said. “Different countries have different patent policies and practices” that can skew or inflate the numbers without corresponding to real-world innovation, Le explained. In China, such factors include state subsidies, tax breaks, and social benefits for patent applicants, which may encourage filing to collect benefits rather than protect genuine discoveries. Patent applications can also be driven by other motives such as seeking a government job, a promotion or building reputation, Le said.
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