Baidu Leads China in Number of Artificial Intelligence Patent Applications

Recently, the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center released the “Artificial Intelligence China Patent Technology Analysis Report”. China’s tech giant Baidu ranks first in Chinese AI patent applications.

According to the report, the number of patent applications in the field of artificial intelligence in China is increasing year by year. In the ranking of Chinese artificial intelligence patent applications, Baidu ranks first with 5,712 applications, 2.4 times that of last year. This is also the second consecutive year Baidu topped the list.

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The report shows that as of October 2019, China has 440,000 artificial intelligence patent applications, surpassing the United States as the country with the largest number of patent applications in the AI field. There is no doubt that China is increasing their industrial intellectual property capacity.

However, doubts remain over whether the quantity of patent applications translates to quality intellectual property. For example, many of the Chinese AI patents are not filed internationally, which is crucial to protecting the property in all territories where the technology exists. In addition, the percentage of patent applications filed in China from Chinese companies that are accepted is around 26%, while foreign enterprises have a patent acceptance rate of around 68% in the country.

Apart from Baidu, other companies topping the list in terms of the number of patent applications were Tencent, Microsoft, Inspur and Huawei.

In terms of AI, Baidu conducts research in areas including deep learning, natural language processing, speech recognition, and intelligent driving.

In the field of deep learning technology, Baidu has 1429 patent applications. In speech recognition and natural language processing, Baidu has 933 and 938 patent applications respectively; in the field of intelligent driving of fierce competition, the total number of Baidu applications reached 1,237.

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