Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) retained its status as the top patent applicant in the country for the eighth consecutive year last year, statistics released by the Intellectual Property Bureau on Thursday showed.
Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract maker of consumer electronics products, submitted 4,412 patent applications last year, of which 1,535 were granted approvals.
Hon Hai led both in terms of number of applications and number of approved patents.
The government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) came in second with 740 patent applications. AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) was third with 671.
ITRI was also the runner-up in terms of number of patents granted, at 427, followed by Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co (正崴) at 402.
Qualcomm Inc of the US topped the list of foreign corporations or legal entities that submitted patent applications in Taiwan last year, with 1,442.
It was followed by Sony Corp of Japan with 562 and Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands with 356.
Sony had 212 of its patent applications approved, the most among foreign corporations.
Overall, the bureau received a total of 8,494 patent applications last year, an increase of more than 2,000 compared with a year earlier, it said.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
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