While the United States is home to some of the best-known generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) companies today, China leads in number of inventions. The latest report The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) points out that since 2017, the Asian giant has published more patents in this field each year than all other regions of the planet combined.
Chinese organizations filed more than 38,000 patent families (sets of patents covering the same or similar technical content) between 2014 and 2023. As a result, the country has not only positioned itself in first place in the ranking, but has also been able to boast an annual growth rate of 50% in recent years. The United States, for its part, is in second place.
The US filed far fewer patents
During the same period, US organizations submitted about 6,300 patent families. In the ranking we also find South Korea in third place, Japan in fourth and India in fifth. If we focus on Europe, the United Kingdom is positioned as the first country on the continent to appear in the ranking, although it does so in sixth place with 714 patent families.
There are some other interesting data in the report. For example, Germany is in seventh place with 708 patent families, but it stands out for having published more patents in recent years, so it is likely to overtake the British in the future. We also see India having a growth rate of 56%, higher than China, although it is far from the top positions.
Patents registered by country between 2014 and 2023 – Image: WIPO
An interesting way to visualize this trend is to project the data to the organization level. In this case, as expected, we have names from China in the top positions. Tencent Holdings ranks at the top. We are talking about a company that has launched its own chatbot for its local market. Then we find the insurance firm Ping An Insurance.
Baidu, also known as the “Chinese Google,” is in third place. One of its most famous AI projects was the chatbot Ernie, which, despite having a weak presentation, quickly grew in number of users. Fourth place goes to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The American company IBM is in fifth place in terms of GenAI patents.
GenAI’s top patent holders from 2014 to 2023 – Image: WIPO
We must not forget that IBM has been working in the field of artificial intelligence for decades, although recently it has also opted to equip its platform Watsonx of generative capabilities for its business customers. To find another US organisation we have to jump to eighth place, where Google (Alphabet) is in contention with Gemini. And in tenth place is Microsoft.
Microsoft is one of the main players in the AI revolution. Its investments, coupled with its cloud infrastructure, have fueled the growth of OpenAI, a name synonymous with GenAI. Curiously, the firm led by Sam Altman, according to WIPO, appears not to have filed any patents until early 2023, presumably due to its non-profit origins.
The creators of ChatGPT, we must not forget, now have a commercial focus that It was not in their initial plansand are preparing to launch more new features, such as a ‘Her’-style voice mode and the Sora video generator. However, we will have to wait and see if China will end up becoming a world-renowned leader in GenAI beyond its patent applications.
Images | Steve Johnson | Engin Akyurt | Frimufilms (Freepik) | WIPO
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