Huawei: World's Highest Number Of Patents But Nearly 80% Are Of Poor Quality

For China, Huawei is not only a technology giant but also a symbol of the country's ability to research and develop. The company prides itself on a higher number of patents than any other company worldwide in 2018. But if you look deeper into these patents, you can see that their quality is still inferior to US-based competitors.

That's the researchers' conclusion that only about 21% of Huawei's patent filed can be categorized as innovative.

In 2018, Huawei rose to the top of the world by filing 5,405 patents, more than twice as much as companies such as Mitsubishi Electric of Japan and U.S. chipmaker Intel.

According to Tokyo-based analyst Patent Result, Huawei's patent quality is a different story. To assess the quality of patents of Huawei and its competitors, the Patent Result is based on a set of criteria including originality, the applications of their patents, and versatility. They are then grouped together based on their score compared to a standard number.

Patents with a deviation of 55 or higher are considered to represent a "high quality" patent or innovative. This category accounts for 21% of Huawei's patents, a figure that is much lower than Intel's (32%) and Qualcomm (44%).

How does Huawei rank in terms of creativity?

Although Huawei's name was not among the top 20 most innovative companies in the world in the early 2000s. After a period of rapidly climbing to the top, it is now listed among the top 4 companies in the last 5 years. What is Huawei's secret?

In recent years, Huawei has actively acquired patents to increase the overall quality of its huge number of patents on key technologies.

Huawei bought about 500 patents from foreign companies, including 250 patents from US companies. The acquisitions also include patents for digital signal transmission and network control. 67% of Huawei's "quality" patents come from these.

Patent acquisition is a common practice when a company wants to climb the technological ladder. But compared to other Chinese tech companies, Huawei shows itself to be the most active buyer. For example, Alibaba has only purchased 43 patents from US companies, while Tencent has only one.

Huawei has also actively been seeking talents from the U.S. technology industry. US engineers and technology experts employed by the company are now a core part of its research and development team.

Based on a review of Huawei’s filed patents, Patent Result lists the company's top 30 engineers. On this list, dominated are engineers recruited from foreign companies, mostly in North America with 17 people.