Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) in the first three months of this year filed the most invention patent applications it has ever filed in a quarter, retaining its place as the nation’s top patent applicant, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said last week.
In the first quarter, the world’s largest contract chipmaker filed 678 invention patents, up 426 percent quarter-on-quarter and the most among Taiwanese and foreign applicants for an eighth straight quarter, Intellectual Property Office data showed.
Among foreign applicants, US-based chip designer Qualcomm Inc placed first with 215 invention patent applications, up 46 percent from the previous quarter, the data showed.
In Taiwan, patents are categorized in three groups: invention patents; utility model patents that cover how items are used and work; and design patents.
Invention patents are deemed the most important in terms of the creation of new technical ideas.
Flat-panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) filed the second-largest number of invention patent applications at 121, up 6 percent year-on-year, followed by chip designer Realtek Semiconductor Corp (瑞昱半導體) with 112 applications, iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) with 78 and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院) with 60.
Electrical product maker Nitto Denko Corp of Japan placed second among foreign companies with 186 applications, up 26 percent year-on-year, followed by South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co with 141 applications, Japanese semiconductor supplier Tokyo Electron Ltd with 135 and US semiconductor equipment supplier Applied Materials Inc with 128.
The data showed that 3,821 invention patent applications were filed by Taiwanese firms in the first quarter.
PC brand Acer Inc (宏碁) filed the most design patent applications at 21, while US-based jewelry brand Harry Winston was the top foreign firm with 42 filings.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by