On the list of top 250 largest patent holders worldwide (2021), I see that Chinese universities hold many more patents than other universities, even normalizing by population size or student population size. Why? I am especially interested in the difference between China and the USA.
Universities ranked by number of active patent families* from the link above:
Rank | Name | # active patent families | Country |
---|---|---|---|
2 | Chinese Academy of Sciences CAS | 78,415 | China |
16 | Tsinghua University | 31,368 | China |
34 | Zhejiang University ZJU | 21,805 | China |
76 | Zhejiang University of Technology ZJUT | 11,053 | China |
109 | Dalian University of Technology | 7,932 | China |
112 | National Research Council of Science and Technology | 7,803 | South Korea |
119 | Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics | 7,373 | China |
124 | China University of Mining and Technology CUMT | 7,014 | China |
151 | University of California | 5,603 | USA |
157 | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS | 5,370 | France |
218 | Capital Medical University | 3,739 | China |
*An active patent family is:
a collection of global patent filings related to a single invention. For example, if a company invents a new technology and files related patent applications in 10 countries, that represents one patent family. Further we only count patent families that are active – which contain at least one current, granted patent. This is a patent that can be enforced and that has not expired.