Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) recently published data of top 100 applicants filed the most patent applications in 2020. Among the domestic and foreign applicants, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) again filed over one thousand invention applications for two consecutive years, outpacing all other applicants with the highest number of 1,096 applications, and was followed by Qualcomm with 720 applications. Aside from the local and foreign big enterprises which accounted for the top patent applicants, there were 27 schools (universities), 5 research institutes and 8 banks in the top 100 list of domestic applicants. TIPO’s data is summarized in the following tables.
Number of Taiwan patent applications filed by top domestic and foreign applicants in 2020
| Type of Patent | Invention | Utility Model | Design | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Domestic applicant | Enterprise | 6,315（-7%） | 1599（+19%） | 599（+29%） |
| School | 1,270（+24%） | 875（+4%） | 87（+98%） | |
| Research | 552（-19%） | 50（+14%） | 2（-71%） | |
| Foreign applicant | 11,715（-12%） | 144（+11%） | 1,565（-4%） | |
Top domestic applicants (with number of applications)
| Enterprises: TSMC (1,096), Acer (523), AU Optronics (466), Realtek Semiconductor (420), MediaTek (330), Inventec (236), *Hon Hai Precision (231), Compal Electronics (209) *under Foxconn Group |
| Schools: Taipei City University of Science & Technology (181), Far East University (126), National Cheng Kung Universities (109) |
| Institutes: Industrial Technology Research Institute (352), Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (97), National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (58) |
| Banks: Land Bank of Taiwan (133), Bank of Taiwan (124) and Taiwan Cooperative Bank (94) |
Top foreign applicants (with number of applications)
| Invention applications: Qualcomm (720), Applied Materials (615), Nitto Denko (461), Tokyo Electron (435), *Kioxia (337), Disco (291), Sumitomo Chemical (266), Samsung (247), Fujifilm (259), ASML (239), Shin-Etsu Chemical (207), Intel (205), Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (204) *formerly, Toshiba Memory Note: The top foreign applicant of 2019 was Alibaba Group, which is now replaced by its established company, Alipay (Hangzhou), who filed 70 total patent applications and ranked No. 80 in the top 100 list of 2020. |
| Design applications: Ford Global Technologies (243), Harry Winston (139), PSA automobiles (106), BMW (104), Renault (89), Apple (86), Xiaomi Mobile Software (80), DAF Trucks (68), Google (64) Note: Apple and Google each filed also 36 and 91 invention applications. |
