Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) reported that the US last year approved 99 percent of its patent applications, which placed the tech giant among the top patent holders in the US.
In its Corporate Social Responsibility Report, TSMC said it last year secured about 3,600 patents worldwide, including more than 2,300 in the US.
As of the end of last year, TSMC owned more than 39,000 patents, the report said.
Photo: Reuters
The company last year filed almost 6,500 patent applications worldwide and ranked among the top 10 patent applicants in the US. In Taiwan, it was the largest patent applicant for the fourth consecutive year.
As of the end of last year, TSMC had filed more than 55,000 patent applications worldwide.
The chipmaker, which has a more than 50 percent share of the world’s pure wafer foundry business, said that to protect its intellectual property, maintain a lead over its peers and boost its competitive edge, it is determined to strengthen its intellectual property portfolio.
Also in the report, TSMC said it last year spent US$2.96 billion on research and development (R&D), a new high in the company’s history.
Last year’s R&D spending rose 4 percent from a year earlier, with its R&D workforce growing 5 percent to 6,534.
The expenses amounted to about 8.5 percent of TSMC’s total sales last year.
The company has said it expects its R&D spending would equal 8.5 percent of its annual revenue until 2030.
TSMC reported record-high sales last year of NT$1.07 trillion, and forecast that sales this year would grow 14 to 19 percent, so its R&D spending is expected to reach another high, ranging between US$3.37 billion and US$3.52 billion.
Analysts said that TSMC’s R&D spending is the reason the chipmaker over the past few years has been able to serve as the sole processor provider to Apple Inc for iPhone production.
Through its R&D efforts, TSMC has also secured large orders from HiSilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體) — an integrated circuit design unit of Chinese telecom equipment supplier Huawei Technologies Co (華為) — and US clients such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Nvidia Corp and Qualcomm Inc, as well as Taiwanese IC designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科), analysts said.
Analysts also said that TSMC not only leads South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co, but has also left its Chinese competitor Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯國際) about two generations behind.
The Investment Commission yesterday approved a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) application to invest an additional US$3.5 billion in its Arizona subsidiary to manufactured advanced chips. The world’s largest contract chipmaker’s board of directors last month approved the funding project after TSMC started moving manufacturing equipment into the fab in December last year in preparation for the production of 4-nanometer chips next year. TSMC said it has also commenced the second phase of facility construction in Arizona. The second fab is to produce semiconductors using 3-nanometer technology in 2026. Altogether, TSMC plans to spend US$40 billion on the Arizona fabs, doubling its
KEY SECTOR: Taiwan’s new chip legislation is insufficient, and a more strategic ‘chip act’ that covers the whole semiconductor ecosystem is needed, MediaTek’s chairman said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) chairman Rick Tsai (蔡明介) yesterday urged the government to formulate a state semiconductor strategy and comprehensive “chip act” that includes local chip designers and smaller-scale semiconductor companies, as they are facing intensifying competition from China. The government is playing an increasingly important role in safeguarding the local semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, given that the US, the EU and Japan are offering hefty subsidies and significant tax incentives to build semiconductor capacity domestically, as they have realized the strategic importance of semiconductors, Tsai said. To implement such a program, the government should take steps to finance a “chip act,” Tsai said
Microsoft Corp has threatened to cut off access to its Internet search data, which it licenses to rival search engines, if they do not stop using it as the basis for their own artificial intelligence (AI) chat products, people familiar with the dispute have said. The software maker licenses the data in its Bing search index — a map of the Internet that can be quickly scanned in real time — to other companies that offer Web search, such as Apollo Global Management Inc’s Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Last month, Microsoft integrated a cousin of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology, into Bing. Rivals
Three years after Luxembourg declared all public transport free in a bid to clear its roads of jams and cut pollution, the car is still king of the congested grand duchy. Traffic permitting, it is barely an hour’s drive from Weiswampach in the far north of Luxembourg near the German and Belgian borders to Dudelange in the south, next door to France. The wealthy country of just 650,000 people appeared the perfect place for a bold experiment — making public transport on trains, trams and buses free nationwide. However, Luxembourg, despite its lack of long-distance highways, has one of the highest rates