بررسی اعتبار برنامه های ثبت اختراع به عنوان شاخص ساختار بازار و رقابت در چین

An increasing number of studies are using either worldwide Chinese patent applications as an indicator to assess the country’s international competitiveness or applications at the Chinese SIPO as an indicator of the internal structure of innovative activities on its domestic market. Whenever such macro level studies are presented, however, many practitioners tend to express disbelief regarding the validity of patent indicators in this emerging market, where IPR protection is perceived to play a role that differs strongly from that in other economies. This paper, therefore, compares the structure of both patent applications at the Chinese national office and global applications by Chinese inventors. Moreover, it contrasts Chinese application activities with those of other nations. On this basis, it analyses if there is evidence of different underlying motivations for and logics of application that would substantiate such doubts. It concludes that, following WTO accession, the Chinese technology market is finding its specific equilibrium but retains certain persistent particularities. Global filings of Chinese applicants, in contrast, remain biased towards the few major firms that can compete at the world markets for technology.

Patent applications are a well acknowledged indicator to measure national innovative capacity in developed market economies [1], [2], [3] and [4]. In emerging markets, in contrast, their validity as an indicator is often challenged for a number of different reasons, relating to both the emerging nature of the economy itself and common deficiencies of systems of IPR protection in their early stages of development (cf. e.g. [5] and [6]). While many of these objections are relevant in principle, the author is not aware of any basis on which such claims could be made in a generalisable way. Consequently, a detailed empirical analysis of each particular situation is needed. This article, therefore, will analyse the situation in China, one of the emerging countries that is becoming an increasingly central focus of interest for patent based analysis, since more and more studies find that following a period of knowledge adaptation and absorption in the 1990s – during which patent applications may have been a less relevant indicator – the number of patent applications has surged since the country’s accession to the WTO in 2000. Additionally, moreover, there are signs suggesting a shift towards genuine in-house innovation in universities and private enterprises, that calls for patent protection [7]. Consequently, a number of studies, including many in this journal, have started to use patent applications for complex analysis of national competitiveness in China [8], [9] and [10]. Despite a number of arguments in favour of its utility as an indicator, patent applications remain a highly politicised issue in a country that on the one hand uses them as a per se measure of research performance at universities [11] – and thus at least implicitly a prerequisite for promotions following evaluations. On the other hand it is still sufficiently unable to enforce litigation claims that many private firms prefer secrecy to patenting as a means of IPR protection [12] and [5], thus raising doubts about whether the degree of patent activity really creates a suitable image of the factual innovative activities on the ground. While all this is undoubtedly the case, it remains unclear whether it really compromises the validity of patents as an indicator of innovation in China. Anecdotal evidence is certainly not enough to make this case. The key argument of this paper, therefore, will be based on the assumption that if, indeed, there were differences in the underlying processes and motivations so substantial to call into question the overall validity of the indicator itself, this would have to be reflected in significant structural differences in many respects. Consequently, one aim of this paper is to examine how structurally similar the overall pattern of patent applications at the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) is to that at other globally relevant offices. In addition to that, the structure of applications by Chinese applicants at the SIPO will be compared to that of applicants from leading economies at their respective national offices.

In conclusion, the generalised claim that Chinese patent data were per se unsuitable for either internal structural analysis or international comparisons cannot be upheld. In contrast, it appears that formerly fluctuating patterns have stabilised in the course of the rapid increase in overall applications in the past 5–10 years and that in line with the country’s catching up process patent applications at the SIPO reflect the increasing activities of national inventors. It has thus become meaningful to use patents as a measure of the now relevant innovative national activities in addition to their former function as a measure of foreign activities at the Chinese market. Domestic applications at the SIPO remain the relevant indicator to judge innovative activities in an economy with relatively low technological capabilities. However, the analyst should remain aware that this indicator remains impaired by the fact that a share of the applications at the national office appears to follow a policy-driven logic slightly different from that based on the classical IPR protection function. The structure of Chinese applications on the international stage, in contrast, so far reflects a selection of activities only since there is a very limited number of Chinese enterprises that can compete on the world market. Consequently, it remains problematic to try to analyse domestic structures based on the assessment of an international competitiveness that the majority of firms does not have. While this reflects the realities on the ground, it needs to be borne in mind to be aware of pitfalls when applying comparative approaches that may be straightforward for developed economies but for China are not. As a final remark, it needs to be pointed out that this paper has not attempted to directly investigate the quality of patent examination at SIPO, or the threshold applied to qualify as ’non-obvious’. Therefore, the author cannot provide direct evidence on these issues or directly falsify any of the related claims. Nonetheless, this paper has demonstrated that, from what is visible at the surface, it appears that even though the Chinese IPR system may not be functioning very well yet, it does already reflect the main features of the Chinese innovation system. Whatever their practical deficiencies regarding their main purpose, it appears that Chinese patent applications have become a suitable indicator of measurement in the course of the past decade.