Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) ranked as the largest invention patent applicant in the nation in the third quarter of this year, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Intellectual Property Office.
The office said that Hon Hai, which assembles iPhones and iPads for Apple Inc, has been Taiwan’s largest invention patent applicant since 2004.
While the world’s largest contract electronics maker retained first place in the third-quarter rankings, the number of its invention patent applications filed with the government plummeted 56.84 percent from a year earlier to 82, a year-on-year drop for eight quarters in a row, the office’s data shows.
The office said the decline in Hon Hai’s applications reflects the company’s changes in strategy, because it is paying more attention to the quality of its patents than the quantity.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chip maker, came in second with 80 applications, up 53.85 percent from a year earlier.
The office said that TSMC rose four notches in applicant rankings from the second quarter of the year as the chipmaker has intensified its research and development efforts.
In the first nine months of this year, the number of Hon Hai’s and TSMC’s patent applications fell 36.67 percent and 11.52 percent respectively, to 513 and 169, the office’s statistics showed.
Flat-panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) came in third in the third quarter, with 71 applications, a drop of 30.39 percent from the same period last year, but ahead of PC vendor Acer Inc (宏碁), which filed 52 applications, 44.68 percent fewer than the same period last year.
The Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院) filed 51 applications, down 8.93 percent, coming in fifth in the rankings, ahead of power management system supplier Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) with 50 applications, memory chip maker Macronix International Co (旺宏) with 48, contract notebook computer firm Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) with 42 and Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and contract electronics supplier Wistron Corp (緯創), both with 41.
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