Taiwan Intellectual Property Office has published statistical data for the top 100 domestic and foreign patent applicants in 2018. As shown below, domestic applicants can be divided into three categories: enterprises, schools, and research institutes. Domestic applications in 2018 were 77.67% from enterprises, 13.12% from schools, and 9.21% from research institutes. Patent filings increased for enterprises, but had only slight changes for schools and research institutes.
| Year | Cases filed in 2016 | Cases filed in 2017 | Cases filed in 2018 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patent Types | Invention | Utility Model | Design | Invention | Utility Model | Design | Invention | Utility Model | Design |
| Research Institute | 861 | 44 | 5 | 782 | 41 | 8 | 741 | 52 | 10 |
| School | 1,054 | 1,107 | 47 | 1,004 | 807 | 42 | 1,054 | 789 | 53 |
| Enterprise | 4,955 | 943 | 505 | 6,134 | 1,145 | 388 | 6,246 | 1,226 | 595 |
| Subtotal | 6,870 | 2,094 | 557 | 7,920 | 1,993 | 438 | 8,041 | 2,067 | 658 |
| Total | 9,521 | 10,351 | 10,766 | ||||||
For the top 100 list of domestic applicants, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) filed 944 cases and ranked first, followed by AU Optronics Corporation with 586 cases, Acer Inc. with 476 cases, MediaTek with 452 cases, and Industry Technology Research Institute with 441 cases. Hon Hai Precision Industry Company filed 246 cases and dropped to rank No. 6 (minus growth at 49.27%). The list has 25 local schools, in which Far East University ranked first with 184 cases but filed mainly utility model applications. Invention patent applications from school applicants were mostly filed by National Cheng Kung University with 92 cases, National Chiao Tung University with 85 cases, National Tsing Hua University with 85 cases, National Chin-Yi University of Technology with 74 cases, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology with 71 cases, National Sun Yat-sen University with 65 cases, National Taiwan University with 64 cases, National Hu-wei University of Science and Technology with 53 cases, and National Taipei University of Technology with 51 cases. There were 6 local research institutes in the list which filed mainly invention patent applications. These institutes include Industry Technology Research Institute with 441 cases, National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology with 112 cases, Metal Industries Research & Development Centre with 102 cases, Institute for Information Industry with 64 cases, Institute of Nuclear Energy Research with 46 cases, and Taiwan Textile Research Institute with 38 cases.
Foreign applicants in the top list were mostly from enterprises. Top 5 applicants were Qualcomm with 1011 cases (+67.38%), Alibaba group with 599 cases (-21.39%), Applied Materials with 437 cases (-11.35%), Tokyo Electron Limited with 378 cases (+8.3%), and Nitto Denko with 315 cases (+12.9%). 6th to 10th applicants include Disco Corporation with 285 cases, Corning Incorporated with 270 cases, Samsung Electronics with 269 cases, Semiconductor Energy Laboratory with 253 cases and Oppo Mobile with 253 cases. Overall, Japanese companies accounted for nearly half of the top foreign patent applicants. Among 47,429 invention patent cases filed in 2018, domestic applicants filed 18,365 cases and foreign applicants filed 29,064 cases, in which Japanese applicants filed 12,871 cases.
