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.
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