IT'S AN ANTI-CREATIVE CULTURE:

Chinese Innovation Is a Paper Tiger: A closer look at China's patent filings and R&D spending reveals a country that has a long way to go. (ANIL K. GUPTA AND HAIYAN WANG, 7/28/11, WSJ)

[M]ore than 95% of the Chinese applications were filed domestically with the State Intellectual Property Office--and the vast majority cover "innovations" that make only tiny changes on existing designs. A better measure is to look at innovations that are recognized outside China--at patent filings or grants to China-origin inventions by the world's leading patent offices, the U.S., the EU and Japan. On this score, China is way behind.

The most compelling evidence is the count of "triadic" patent filings or grants, where an application is filed with or patent granted by all three offices for the same innovation. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, there were only 473 triadic patent filings from China versus 14,399 from the U.S., 14,525 from Europe, and 13,446 from Japan.

Starkly put, in 2010 China accounted for 20% of the world's population, 9% of the world's GDP, 12% of the world's R&D expenditure, but only 1% of the patent filings with or patents granted by any of the leading patent offices outside China. Further, half of the China-origin patents were granted to subsidiaries of foreign multinationals.

China has all the disadvantages that Japan did and lacks the few advantages--being an island and an ally of the US.

Posted by oj at August 22, 2011 6:50 AM
Tweet   

Follow @brothersjudd