According to an analysis by Incopat, corporate applicants accounted for about 67% of Chinese invention patents in 2020, among which Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.’s  is by far the leader. College and university patentees accounted for about 22% with Zhejiang University continuing to rank number 1 for invention patents.  The top foreign corporate patentee was Samsung Electronics at #9. The top American corporate patentee was Qualcomm at #16.

Huawei remains the top patentee in 2020 while Alibaba makes the biggest jump upward from 2019 from 14 to 8. Intel fell off the list in 2020 and Qualcomm dropped 11 in 2019 to 16 in 2020.

Top 20 Corporate Patentees in China for 2020 (not normalized)

* State Grid patents were normalized in 2019 leading to a higher ranking. 

The top 3 IPC classifications for 2020 patents were G06 (calculation; calculation; counting), H04 (electric communication technology), and G01 (measurement; testing).  

G06 Top Patentees

H04 Top Patentees

Chinese Patentees by Country

China was the largest patentee of Chinese patents in 2020 with Japan, United States, Germany and South Korea following. Cayman Islands also made a showing in the top 10, perhaps because many Chinese companies form holding companies there.
 

Note that official 2020 patent statistics have not yet been released. We’ll report on it in the next few days but we expect a tremendous increase in all three types of Chinese patent filings in 2020 versus 2019 despite the pandemic.
 

Source: China IP Law Update