International Patenting Strategies of Chinese Residents: an analysis of foreign-oriented patent families

In terms of the number of its patent applications, in 2012 China has emerged as the country with the largest IP office in the world. The performance of the Chinese IP system is thus increasingly in the spotlight. While significant economic studies have been devoted to the rise of domestic patenting in China, hardly any study has focused on Chinese patent filings in foreign countries. This paper analyzes Chinese patenting abroad by using WIPO’s foreign-oriented patent family dataset and a respective enterprise questionnaire. It finds that by the turn of the century China emerged as major actor in terms of international patenting. While this is changing rapidly, the share of Chinese patents which get filed abroad is still a fraction of total patents filed at home and most patents still also only target one foreign IP office. Chinese foreign-oriented patent families are concentrated in a few technology fields, notably those related to the ICT sector, 'Digital communication', followed by 'Computer technology', 'Nanotechnology', and similar fields. A few Chinese firms are responsible for a large share of total Chinese patents filed abroad. The paper however also highlights that some of these trends are changing rapidly towards more intensive and broad-based filing abroad. Initial results from a selective firm survey also show a shift from the desire to protect technologies abroad to more strategic motives: (i) the desire to build patent portfolios avoiding litigation, (ii) facilitating collaboration with other firms, but also to (iii) license and sell IP abroad, and to (iv) further the firm’s reputation as true innovator.