Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) recently analyzed the technical fields of invention patent applications filed in 2020. The overall filings show that the major technical fields remain semiconductor, computing technology, electrical machinery apparatus and energy, optics, audio-visual technology, and digital communication. The following tables summarize the top patent applicants of these technical fields for Taiwan invention applications in recent three years.
Source: TIPO
Semiconductor
| Rank | Applicant | Origin | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|
| 1 | TSMC | TW | 675 | 935 | 788 |
| 2 | Tokyo Electron | JP | 220 | 304 | 272 |
| 3 | Applied Materials | US | 156 | 230 | 190 |
| 4 | Disco | JP | 188 | 145 | 159 |
| 5 | Kioxia | JP | 91 | 149 | 149 |
| 6 | Yangtze Memory Technologies | CN | 100 | 122 | 112 |
| 7 | Nanya Technology | TW | 59 | 109 | 98 |
| 8 | Sony Semiconductor Solutions | JP | 26 | 101 | 87 |
| 9 | Screen Holdings | JP | 123 | 133 | 84 |
| 10 | Intel | US | 23 | 20 | 76 |
Computing Technology
| Rank | Applicant | Origin | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|
| 1 | RealTek Semiconductor | TW | 49 | 82 | 118 |
| 2 | Acer | TW | 145 | 150 | 109 |
| 3 | TSMC | TW | 58 | 113 | 102 |
| 4 | Kioxia | JP | 71 | 112 | 95 |
| 5 | Hon Hai Precision Industry | TW | 30 | 36 | 77 |
| 6 | Samsung | KR | 120 | 85 | 75 |
| 7 | Winbond | TW | 75 | 68 | 69 |
| 8 | Inventec | TW | 74 | 63 | 65 |
| 8 | Qualcomm | US | 109 | 57 | 65 |
| 8 | Silicon Motion | TW | 74 | 86 | 65 |
Electrical machinery apparatus and energy
| Rank | Applicant | Origin | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|
| 1 | Hitachi High-Tech Corp. | JP | 15 | 17 | 57 |
| 2 | Foxconn Interconnect Technology | KY | 57 | 47 | 55 |
| 3 | Acer | TW | 25 | 55 | 51 |
| 4 | Applied Materials | US | 23 | 36 | 50 |
| 5 | Delta Electronics | TW | 36 | 49 | 47 |
| 6 | AMEC | CN | 5 | 11 | 45 |
| 6 | Dongguan Luxshare | CN | - | 1 | 45 |
| 8 | RealTek | TW | 18 | 30 | 35 |
| 9 | Nitto Denko | JP | 12 | 16 | 31 |
| 10 | MediaTek | TW | 15 | 15 | 27 |
Optics
| Rank | Applicant | Origin | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|
| 1 | ASML Netherlands | NL | 117 | 138 | 124 |
| 2 | AU Optronics | TW | 196 | 155 | 101 |
| 3 | Nitto Denko | JP | 79 | 67 | 74 |
| 4 | GSEO (Xiamen) | CN | 7 | 30 | 59 |
| 5 | TSMC | TW | 63 | 112 | 54 |
| 6 | Canon | JP | 23 | 29 | 46 |
| 6 | Sumitomo Chemical | JP | 26 | 30 | 46 |
| 8 | Largan Precision | TW | 45 | 47 | 39 |
| 9 | Acer | TW | 20 | 31 | 38 |
| 9 | Applied Materials | US | 9 | 40 | 38 |
| 9 | Fujifilm | JP | 30 | 54 | 38 |
| 9 | Shin-Etsu Chemical | JP | 15 | 27 | 38 |
Audio-visual technology
| Rank | Applicant | Origin | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|
| 1 | AU Optronics | TW | 152 | 173 | 160 |
| 2 | Qualcomm | US | 64 | 60 | 112 |
| 3 | MediaTek | TW | 90 | 81 | 83 |
| 4 | Inventec | TW | 32 | 52 | 79 |
| 5 | Acer | TW | 41 | 44 | 43 |
| 6 | Compal | TW | 15 | 16 | 38 |
| 7 | Sony Semiconductor Solutions | JP | 12 | 44 | 34 |
| 8 | RealTek | TW | 17 | 40 | 33 |
| 9 | LG Display | KR | 14 | 12 | 29 |
| 10 | Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft | DE | 8 | 23 | 28 |
Digital Communication
| Rank | Applicant | Origin | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|
| 1 | Qualcomm | US | 641 | 333 | 395 |
| 2 | MediaTek | TW | 148 | 158 | 115 |
| 3 | RealTek | TW | 18 | 43 | 79 |
| 4 | MediaTek Singapore | SG | 40 | 84 | 71 |
| 5 | Chunghwa Telecom | TW | 54 | 60 | 44 |
| 6 | Datang Mobile | CN | - | 1 | 37 |
| 7 | Samsung | KR | 14 | 20 | 34 |
| 8 | Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) | SE | 22 | 25 | 26 |
| 9 | ZTE | CN | - | - | 24 |
| 9 | The Nielsen Company | US | - | - | 24 |
