Huawei: many of the world’s most patents but nearly 80% are of poor quality

For China, Huawei is not only a technology giant but also a symbol of the country’s ability to research and develop. The company prides itself on the number of patents more than any other company globally in 2018. But if you look deeper into these patents, you can see that their quality is still inferior to competitors. America.

That’s the researchers’ conclusion that only about 21% of Huawei’s patent filed can be categorized as highly creative.

In 2018, Huawei rose to the top of the world by filing 5,405 international patents, more than twice as much as companies such as Mitsubishi Electric of Japan and U.S. chipmaker Intel. .

The top 5 companies filed the most patents in the world in 2005 and 2018.

According to Tokyo-based analyst Patent Result, Huawei’s patent quality is a different story. To assess the quality of patents granted by Huawei and its competitors, the Patent Result is based on a set of criteria including: the origin, true technology applications and the degree of flexibility of the patent. Patents are then grouped together based on its score compared to a standard number.

Patents with a deviation of 55 or higher are considered to represent a “high quality” level or are truly innovative innovations. This category accounts for 21% of Huawei’s patent application, a figure much lower than Intel’s 32% and US mobile chip manufacturer, Qualcomm with 44%.

How does Huawei rank in terms of creativity?

Although Huawei’s name was not among the top 20 most innovative companies in the world in the early 2000s, after a period of rapid climb, it is now listed among the top 4 companies in the last 5 years. here. What is Huawei’s secret?

In recent years, Huawei has actively acquired patents to increase the overall quality of its huge number of patents on key technologies.

Huawei bought about 500 patents from foreign companies, including 250 patents from US companies. The acquisitions also include patents for digital signal transmission and network control. 67% of Huawei’s “quality” patents come from these.

The number of patents acquired by Huawei from foreign companies.

Patent acquisition is a common practice when a company wants to climb the technological ladder. But compared to its compatriots in the Chinese tech community, Huawei shows itself to be the most active buyer. For example, Alibaba has only purchased 43 patents from US companies, while Tencent has only one.

Huawei is also actively seeking talent from the U.S. technology industry. Huawei engineers and technology experts employed by Huawei are now a core part of the company’s research and development team.

Based on a review of Huawei filed patents, Patent Result lists the company’s top 30 engineers. On this list, dominated are engineers recruited from foreign companies, mostly in North America with 17 people.

These 17 engineers have made 370 of the company’s high quality patents (including patents in the name of others). They often come from American companies like Motorola and other IT groups, now acting as launch pads for Huawei’s technological advances.

American patents and engineers are elements of Huawei’s high quality patents.

Huawei moves keep the US government on guard

The pace of Huawei’s patent acquisition and hiring of engineers from U.S. companies is so high that U.S. lawmakers feel the need to be wary of that.

While putting Huawei on the Entity list makes it impossible to buy U.S. components, in August, the ban expanded to include collaborations with research institutes.

Earlier, in July, Republican senators in the US Senate prepared and submitted a new bill to give the government the right to prevent Huawei from buying and reselling U.S. patents.