Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) was the foreign company with the most local patent applications last quarter for the third consecutive quarter, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Alibaba filed a total of 151 patent applications in the July-to-September quarter, a jump of 1,273 percent from the same period last year, the ministry’s Intellectual Property Office said.
Qualcomm Inc took second place with 135 applications, while Intel Corp filed 110, office data showed.
Applied Materials Inc was fourth with 108 applications and Tokyo Electron Ltd was fifth with 87 filings, the statistics showed.
Toshiba Memory Corp was sixth among foreign firms with 83 applications last quarter, the first time the Japanese firm applied for patents over the past year, the office said.
It was also the first time that China’s Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動) applied for patents in Taiwan, with 81 applications submitted, the office added.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) applied for a total of 225 patents last quarter, the fifth straight quarter the company led local firms in filings, the data showed.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) followed TSMC with 114 applications, while AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) was third with 99, the office said.
There were a total of 11,631 patent applications by domestic and foreign firms last quarter, an increase of 4 percent from the same period last year, it added.
It was the third consecutive quarter of an annual increase in filings, the data showed.
The US and the EU were yesterday to announce a joint effort aimed at identifying semiconductor supply disruptions as well as countering Russian disinformation, officials said. Top US officials are visiting the French scientific hub of Saclay for a meetup of the Trade and Technology Council, created last year as China increasingly exerts its technology clout. US officials acknowledged that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has broadened the council’s scope, but said the Western bloc still has its eye on competition from China. The two sides will announce an “early warning system” for semiconductors supply disruptions, hoping to avoid excessive competition between Western powers
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BUYERS BATTLING: While China Steel expects demand to rise in the second half, the World Steel Association reduced its global demand forecast to 0.4% annual growth China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s largest steelmaker, yesterday said it would cut domestic steel prices by 2.1 percent on average for delivery next month in response to a brief slowdown in steel demand and to help customers mitigate mounting manufacturing costs caused by geopolitical issues. However, the company said it expects steel demand to pick up in the second half of the year, benefiting from infrastructure programs in China, as lockdowns there could gradually be lifted later this year, as well as post-war reconstruction projects, if Russia’s war in Ukraine stabilizes. The Kaohsiung-based company’s move matches its Chinese counterparts’ recent