Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, filed the largest number of patent applications in Taiwan in 2021, as it had done for the previous five years, the Intellectual Property Office said Tuesday.
According to data from the office, TSMC filed 1,950 invention patents in 2021, an increase of 78 percent from the previous year, as it intensified its efforts to upgrade its technologies and cement its lead over its peers on the global market.
Speaking with reporters, Director-General of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) Hong Shu-min (???) said it was a record high increase in the number of TSMC patent applications in Taiwan.
Of the 1,950 TSMC applications filed with the IPO last year, 1,053 patents were granted, which was also the highest number secured by an applicant last year, Hong said.
Under Taiwan law, patents are categorized in three groups -- invention, utility model, and design -- and invention patents are deemed the most important in terms of new technology ideas.
TSMC is currently working to develop the sophisticated 2nm chipmaking process, having started commercial production on the 5 nanometer process, and it is conducting trial runs of the 3nm process with the goal of going into mass production in the second half of this year.
Among the other major companies filing patents in Taiwan, flat panel maker AU Optronics Corp. had the second highest number of applications last year, at 471, a 1 percent annual increase. Of that number, 460 were invention patents, while four were utility models, and seven were designs.
PC brand Acer Inc. was in third place, with 462 patent applications, down 12 percent from the previous year, followed by communication network IC designer Realtek Semiconductor Corp. (442 applications) the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (404), and dynamic random access memory chip supplier Nanya Technology Corp. (290).
According to Hong, Realtek and Nanya Technology Corp. both filed the highest number of applications in their history, which represented annual increases of 5 percent and 116 percent, respectively.
Amid a global chip shortage due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tech companies filed as many patent applications as possible last year, Hong said, adding that rising demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy was also a contributing factor.
In 2021, the total number of patent applications filed by Taiwanese companies in the country for invention, utility model and design patents was 12,234, up 8 percent from a year earlier, IPO data showed.
Among the foreign companies, United States-based smartphone chip designer Qualcomm Inc. was the largest applicant in Taiwan, filing 845 invention patents, an annual increase of 17 percent, according to the data.
American semiconductor equipment supplier Applied Materials Inc. had the second highest number, at 793 patents, up 22 percent from a year earlier, followed by Japanese Electrical product maker Nitto Denko Corp. (529 applications), South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. (520), and Japanese semiconductor supplier Tokyo Electron Ltd. (477), the data showed.
In total, foreign companies filed 14,149 patent applications in Taiwan in 2021, an annual increase of 5 percent, according to the data.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel