April 2018
IP Data Highlights No. 1
Read the report

Overview of findings:

• Chinese residents significantly increased their collaboration on U.S. patents while decreasing their single-inventor patents. The share of Chinese-invented patents that were collaborative grew from 54 to 73% between 2000 and 2016.
• Most of this growth is due to greater collaboration among Chinese inventors. However, the share of foreign-collaborative patents with U.S. and European inventors also rose over the past decade. This share decreased for Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau collaborators.
• Chinese entities own the largest share of U.S. patents with Chinese inventors. The share of patents (at least) partially owned by the Chinese reached 65% by 2016, while the share of patents (at least) partially owned by non-Chinese assignees declined to 40%.
• At less than 10%, Chinese own the lowest share of U.S. patents issued to teams of Chinese and US-based inventors.
• For patents with at least one non-Chinese owner, the trend over the past several years shows a move away from Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau-based owners to owners from other regions, especially the U.S. and European Union.