China beat the U.S. in generative AI patents by 6-to-1 for the past ten years — almost 10,000 Chinese patents filed last year alone

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From 2014 to 2023, Chinese researchers filed over 38,000 generative AI patents, compared to the U.S.'s 6,272.

Doctor Robotics Research Analysis
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The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced that China-based organizations filed the most patents related to generative AI over the past decade, outpacing the U.S., Republic of Korea, Japan, and India combined—the four other top generative AI patent-holding nations. China filed 38,210 generative AI patents from 2014 to 2023, while the U.S. is a far second with 6,276 patents.

Other countries in the top 7 of generative AI patent applications include the Republic of Korea (South Korea) at 4,155, Japan at 3,409, India at 1,350, the U.K. at 714, and Germany at 708. This data shows how China is pushing hard to become one of the world's technological leaders. Although it still lags behind the Western world in chipmaking capabilities, this may not be true for long in the software aspect of computing.

However, Washington is going to great lengths to hamper China's tech dominance dreams, with multiple sanctions levied against it. For example, the White House wants to restrict the export of GAA tech and HBM chips to the country—crucial technology required for the local development of AI accelerators. OpenAI has also stepped away from the East Asian country, including its territories like Hong Kong, pushing Chinese firms like Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba to step into the generative AI void.

Nevertheless, universities and research institutions are the primary drivers of generative AI development. According to the WIPO report, out of the top 20 patent holders on its list, 19 are from educational organizations, with Alphabet (Google) being the only corporation standing out. But even though it just sits at number four with the number of published research papers, the sole private corporation in the top patent holders seems to have had a great impact.

Alphabet ranks first in terms of citations, with its research receiving 47,568 mentions from 2010 to 2023. The University of California, Berkeley, is second with 26,090 citations, followed by Université de Montréal and Stanford. Meta is fifth with 19,418 citations. Of the top 20 organizations with citations, only one Chinese organization, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is on the list, with 15,674 mentions.

As the U.S. is applying more and more sanctions against China in the U.S.-China chip war, Chinese scientists are forced to make innovations to help push forward development. While this may be far more difficult with hardware, software engineers and researchers would likely have more options when it comes to programming.

Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • The Historical Fidelity
    This is disingenuous at best, time and time again, these articles come out touting how China is producing volumes of patents, yet fail to recognize the lack of utility of said patents. The Chinese patent system is abused regularly by taking advantage of the “good faith” clause within patent law over the past decades.
    https://ipwatchdog.com/2024/06/19/patents-china-developments-2024-whats-come/id=178041/
    “One Chinese patent expert stated rather bluntly that only 10 percent of China’s patents have market value and that probably 90 percent of them are “trash.””

    “Instead of being innovation-driven, most of China’s patent applications are driven by other motives, such as seeking government subsidy or job promotion, reputation building for individuals or universities and institutions, or acquiring certification as national high-tech enterprises.”

    “Furthermore, except for invention patent, the other two types of patents in China (utility model and industrial design patents) are not calculated in the scope of “patent” at WIPO and in most countries. The high percentage of China’s filings and grants in these two kinds of patents did not add too much credit to China. Between 1985 and 2020, 81–89 percent of the patents granted in China belonged to utility model and industrial design, and only 11–19 percent of the granted domestic patents belong to invention patents, which is the key indicator to evaluate the level of science and innovation in a country. Most of the patents of utility model and design are of low quality and essentially useless.”

    https://www.cigionline.org/articles/what-do-chinas-high-patent-numbers-really-mean/
    Reply
  • Li Ken-un
    There’s also an unspoken truth: a large number of American academic papers are written with contributions by academics with Chinese roots. I say this, because it’s often apparent from the names of the authors, with some false positives from names which are actually Korean or Vietnamese. There isn’t a direct way to discern American citizenship*, but it’s pretty obvious that total disengagement with Chinese academic counterparts would be equivalent to a brain drain for American institutions.

    (* Their citizenship/American-born status is a different discussion. Their treatment wavers between “perpetual outsider” status and “yeah the good ones are batting for our team” depending on which outcome of mental gymnastics is most convenient.)
    Reply
  • The Historical Fidelity
    Li Ken-un said:
    There’s also an unspoken truth: a large number of American academic papers are written with contributions by academics with Chinese roots. I say this, because it’s often apparent from the names of the authors, with some false positives from names which are actually Korean or Vietnamese. There isn’t a direct way to discern American citizenship*, but it’s pretty obvious that total disengagement with Chinese academic counterparts would be equivalent to a brain drain for American institutions.

    (* Their citizenship/American-born status is a different discussion. Their treatment wavers between “perpetual outsider” status and “yeah the good ones are batting for our team” depending on which outcome of mental gymnastics is most convenient.)
    America is a melting pot of all peoples who appreciate the principles that America was founded upon. Does not matter which country they or their ancestors came from, they are Americans.
    Reply
  • nookoool
    The Historical Fidelity said:
    This is disingenuous at best, time and time again, these articles come out touting how China is producing volumes of patents, yet fail to recognize the lack of utility of said patents. The Chinese patent system is abused regularly by taking advantage of the “good faith” clause within patent law over the past decades.
    https://ipwatchdog.com/2024/06/19/patents-china-developments-2024-whats-come/id=178041/
    “One Chinese patent expert stated rather bluntly that only 10 percent of China’s patents have market value and that probably 90 percent of them are “trash.””

    “Instead of being innovation-driven, most of China’s patent applications are driven by other motives, such as seeking government subsidy or job promotion, reputation building for individuals or universities and institutions, or acquiring certification as national high-tech enterprises.”

    “Furthermore, except for invention patent, the other two types of patents in China (utility model and industrial design patents) are not calculated in the scope of “patent” at WIPO and in most countries. The high percentage of China’s filings and grants in these two kinds of patents did not add too much credit to China. Between 1985 and 2020, 81–89 percent of the patents granted in China belonged to utility model and industrial design, and only 11–19 percent of the granted domestic patents belong to invention patents, which is the key indicator to evaluate the level of science and innovation in a country. Most of the patents of utility model and design are of low quality and essentially useless.”

    https://www.cigionline.org/articles/what-do-chinas-high-patent-numbers-really-mean/

    Wasn't "one-click" shopping consider a thrash patent before it wasn't a thrash patent? My understanding is that people also shotgun 1000s of random patents in the US as well with "no utility" until one day it suddenly do have utility.
    Reply
  • The Historical Fidelity
    nookoool said:
    Wasn't "one-click" shopping consider a thrash patent before it wasn't a thrash patent? My understanding is that people also shotgun 1000s of random patents in the US as well with "no utility" until one day it suddenly do have utility.
    Not really, The USPTO is very stringent with their acceptance criteria. There is no “good faith” clause to abuse.
    Reply