JW Insights: Chinese semiconductor companies file 16% more patents in 2022

By Gabby Chen

The number of new patents in the global semiconductor industry in 2022 was 86,863, a 9.3% increase year-on-year, including 35,911 Chinese patents, up 16.0% year-on-year. Liu Jing, general manager of JW Insights intellectual property (IP) division gave this latest figure and patent trends in her speech on "2022 Advanced Semiconductor Technology IP Research" on December 17.

"Both the number of global and Chinese patents this year are rising, indicating that the semiconductor industry is still a hot field of advanced technology IP layout. China's patent growth rate is higher than the global average, reflecting the increased influence and voice of the Chinese market in the global industry and IP layout. The overall trend is positive," said Liu.

She delivered her research report at The 2023 China Semiconductor Investment Alliance (CSIA) Annual Meeting & China IC Industry Award Ceremony held in Hefei, eastern China's Anhui Province on December 17.

Eastern China's Jiangsu Province, southern China's Guangdong Province, and Shanghai ranked top three in terms of patent applications with 5,224, 4,944, and 2,603, respectively.

The Chinese patent layout is mostly in six semiconductor segments: design, manufacturing, packaging, materials, equipment, and EDA. "The number of Chinese patents leads the world in growth in all six semiconductor industry sectors," Liu added.

With regard to design, China has a relatively high proportion of patents. An analysis of SCI papers shows that the patents related to hardware heterogeneous technologies grew rapidly after 2018. China's patent applications for heterogeneous integration are still mostly related to servers and heterogeneous integration software.

Patents on automotive-grade chip design are another favored category, and they focus mostly d on data processing, communication protocols, interface modules, and functional algorithms. Less is on fundamental technologies involved in the design.

Patents for 3D memory chip stacking technology have become common in recent years. More collaboration with universities and research institutes is expected to further the research in this field.

In packaging and testing sector, academic research on advanced packaging technology has entered a mature stage in the past few years, with many topics on 2.5D/3D and wafer-level packaging.

"Our colleges and universities have outstanding research results in Bumping, TSV, and Flip-Chip technologies, but there is still a gap compared with overseas research institutions or enterprises in 2.5D/3D and wafer-level packaging technologies," Liu said.

Regarding materials, 389 patents on gallium oxide semiconductor materials were licensed worldwide in 2022, among which 157 patents were claimed by Chinese applicants, accounting for 40.36%. China's universities and research institutes contributed more than half of the ownership.

In addition, a total of 3,804 patents related to CVD equipment were issued globally in 2022; China ranked No.1 with 41.14%, showing its innovative ability in this field.

The starting time for Chinese companies and foreign companies is close in their research on atomic layer deposition (ALD), an emerging technology in CVD equipment. Chinese companies see ALD as a great opportunity to break in the sector.

China ranks No.2 in the number of patent applications for heat treatment equipment as well.

Liu's report also lists out top firms in China's semiconductor industry ranked by their patent innovative strength, patent influence, global vision, and top emerging companies.