China's New Energy Needs to Increase Overseas Patent Layout

In recent years, research and development of new energy technologies have continued to be active worldwide. In contrast, China’s new energy industry’s overseas patent distribution needs to be strengthened. Industry experts pointed out that not paying attention to the overseas patent layout of new energy technologies can not only make China's new energy industry advantage occupy a larger international market, but also may cause the original market advantage to be limited or even lost.

Recently, relevant national departments organized professionals to analyze the current status of domestic and foreign patents and their technological development trends in new energy fields such as solar photovoltaic power generation, wind power generation, and biomass energy power generation. Research shows that China’s new energy industry has made great progress in recent years, especially through the introduction, digestion, and absorption of overseas technologies, which have made important progress in the three major technical fields of photovoltaic power generation, wind power generation, and biomass power generation. Having mastered and formed a batch of patented technologies with high technological content and good prospects for development, the overall patent technology and industrialization level have been greatly improved, but the overseas patents of some advantageous technologies have not been laid out sufficiently, which is not conducive to the occupation of new energy industry in China by overseas. market.

Part of the number of technical patents

The reporter learned from relevant parties that as of May this year, global patent applications for photovoltaic power generation, wind power generation, and biomass power generation technologies in the global new energy industry were 84,827, 20,276, and 8,078, respectively, of which China’s corresponding technical fields The patent applications were: 15,749 items, 6,707 items and 2,250 pieces of patents. The patents were granted for 9,491 items, 3,528 items and 748 items respectively. In China's three major new energy applications, patent applications have accounted for 82.3%, 87.1%, and 86.9% of the total number of applications in the past five years, which fully shows that China's new energy industry has developed rapidly in recent years.

In the patent applications accepted in China in the past five years, the total number of applications for domestic inventions and utility model patents is higher than the number of applications for foreign applications in China. In particular, the number of invention patent applications is significantly higher than the number of applications for invention patents from abroad, including The total number of invention patent applications in photovoltaic power generation, wind power generation, and biomass energy power generation in the past five years was 8,258, while the number of foreign patent applications was only 2,595, and domestic was nearly 3.2 times that of foreign countries. This was in comparison with the above three fields five years ago. Compared with 1.4 times (the number of domestic invention applications / foreign inventions applied for in China), there has been a significant increase, indicating that the patent quality of the new energy industry in China has been greatly improved in recent years.

It is reported that the patent layout of photovoltaic power generation, wind power generation, and biomass energy power generation in China covers all the technical fields of its industry. A relatively comprehensive research and development system for upstream and downstream industries of new energy industry has basically taken shape. In particular, some technologies of the new energy industry in China have Comparative Advantage. In these three fields, there were 5937 invention patents, 2,304 and 1,005 patents domestically, which accounted for 70.4%, 61.8% and 89.4% respectively of the domestic invention patents in the corresponding fields.

According to research, domestic enterprises and institutions have mastered a batch of patented technologies with high technological content and good development prospects in the new energy industry. For example, the patented silicon process and power generation system technology for photovoltaic power generation metallurgy, domestic patent applications are 3.1 times and 11.8 times the number of foreign applications to China; the domestic patent application for permanent magnet direct drive technology for wind power generation is 10 times the number of foreign applications to China. The domestic patent application for biomass energy generation and electrification technology is 15.2 times the number of foreign applications to China. The above technical fields of China's new energy industry not only have a large number of patents but also have high quality, and some of them are obviously superior to foreign ones.

Insufficient overseas patent layout

With the implementation of China's new energy strategy, the domestic new energy market has become the focus of global attention. In addition, the research and development of new energy technologies in the global scope have continued to be active in recent years. For example, the U.S. General Motors, Japan’s Mitsubishi, and German Siemens and other large foreign multinational companies have Strengthen the patent distribution in the field of new energy in China, and the number of foreign patent applications in China is showing rapid growth. In the field of photovoltaic power generation, wind power generation, and biomass energy power generation, the number of overseas patent applications to China has increased substantially in the past five years, and almost 100% of them are invention patents. This shows that the intention of foreign companies to speed up patent distribution in the new energy field in China is very clear.

In contrast, China's new energy industry overseas patent layout has yet to be strengthened. As of May of this year, in the three major areas of global new energy industry: photovoltaic power generation, wind power generation and biomass power generation, the United States had patented technologies of 28.7%, 49.5% and 52.8%, respectively, outside the United States. In Japan, 13.7%, 16.1%, and 14% of patented technologies were patented outside Japan, while only 2.3%, 1%, and 0.6% of patented technologies were deployed overseas. Industry experts pointed out that not paying attention to the overseas patent layout of new energy technologies can not only make China's new energy industry advantage occupy a larger international market, but also may cause the original market advantage to be limited or even lost.

Based on the above circumstances, experts suggest that relevant government departments should take effective guidance measures to encourage domestic new energy companies to implement the “going out” strategy, deploy overseas patents for key technologies that have been mastered, and seize foreign new energy markets. We will vigorously cultivate domestic enterprises with intellectual property rights and use the intellectual property strategy to maximize the marketization of patented technologies.