Japan continued to outnumber all other countries in the number of patent applications made in Taiwan in the first quarter of the year, data from the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office released on Thursday showed.
Japan filed 3,440 applications in the first quarter of the year, a year-on-year increase of 8.62 percent, according to the data.
Following Japan, the US filed the second-highest number of applications in Taiwan — 1,464 during the January-to-March period.However, the US figure has been declining over the past five years as it switched its focus to the Chinese market, the office said.
During the same period, foreign firms filed a total of 6,737 applications for patents in Taiwan, an annual increase of 3.71 percent, the data showed.
In the first quarter, Taiwanese firms filed 4,859 patent applications, up 2.15 percent over a year ago.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major supplier for Apple Inc, again ranked No. 1 in terms of patent applications with 559, followed by Wistron Corp (緯創), a leading contract electronics manufacturer, and Taiwanese researcher the Industrial Technology Research Institute with 87 each.
In the first quarter, the office received a total of 11,596 patent applications from local and foreign companies, a year-on-year increase of 1.17 percent, the data showed.
Meanwhile, 4,456 trademark applications were filed by foreign firms in the first quarter, a growth of 12.98 percent over the same period last year, the office said.
Japan ranked No. 1 in trademark applications with 1,122, followed by the US with 1,045.
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