In terms of patent quantity for Industry 4.0, China has left the USA and Germany far behind. But what does the number of patents filed say about the quality of the inventions?
For companies that want to offer Industry 4.0 solutions in China, it is essential to know in which areas China has already registered serious innovations.
As part of the technology and patent monitoring program China TechWatch, the Fraunhofer IAO analyzed around 1,700 patent documents from China that were published on Industry 4.0 technologies between January 2013 and April 2015.
Technology experts have filtered out, translated, manually summarized and evaluated the 50 most important inventions. In the field of energy-efficient industrial wireless sensor networks, Chinese inventors have registered important basic patents in the past three years.
New approaches for the operation of energy-efficient and reliable industrial networks have been developed and patented by leading institutions such as the SIA (Shenyang Institute of Automation).
China's largest robot manufacturer, Siasun, has registered around 140 inventions per year in the last three years. Around 300 other Chinese robot manufacturers are also active.
China is also one of the big players in the field of big data: alongside internet giants such as Alibaba and Tencent, lesser-known companies have also registered important patents for big data processing methods and for improving data security, for example through quantum encryption.
The relatively low level of innovation in patent and utility model applications is striking when it comes to the application of Industry 4.0 technologies. Numerous inventions with a low level of novelty have been registered, most of which are also very imprecisely formulated.
"On the one hand, this offers international companies the opportunity to score points on the Chinese market with innovative solutions.
On the other hand, Chinese inventors have a large number of trivial but active property rights. Companies must therefore expect legal disputes in the Chinese market"
Truong Le, patent expert at the Fraunhofer IAO, assesses the situation.
DE
EN
ES
FR
