Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, was the top patent applicant in Taiwan for the fourth consecutive year last year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Friday.
TSMC was the top patent applicant in the local and foreign business communities in Taiwan, while Alibaba Group Services Ltd from China’s largest e-commerce operator, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), was No. 1 for patent applications among foreign firms last year, the ministry said.
TSMC filed 1,333 patent applications, up 41 percent from a year earlier. The company’s applications breached 1,000 for the first time last year, which was its fifth consecutive year of growth, ministry data showed.
All of TSMC’s applications were for invention patents, the ministry said.
The Patent Act (專利法) defines three groups — invention, utility model and design patents — with inventions the most important in terms of the creation of technical ideas.
TSMC has been gearing up to compete with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co in sophisticated 3-nanometer technology development by boosting its capital expenditure, so its patent applications increased accordingly, Intellectual Property Office Director-General Hong Shu-min (洪淑敏) said.
The 7nm process is the latest technology on which TSMC has started mass production. It has said it is planning to launch mass production of a 5 nanometer process this year and a 3 nanometer process in 2022.
TSMC’s capital expenditure this year is expected to reach a new high of US$15 billion to US$16 billion, the firm said last month.
The increase in capital spending could boost the number of patent applications it submits this year, analysts said.
Acer Inc (宏碁) was second for local patent applications, filing 565 applications, comprised of 407 invention patents, 108 utility model patents and 50 design patents.
Flat-panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) had 553 applications, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院) had 385 and integrated circuit designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) had 356, ministry data showed.
Among the top foreign applicants, Alibaba filed 850 patent applications last year, comprised of 828 invention patents, three utility model patents and 19 design patents, the data showed.
US-based semiconductor production equipment supplier Applied Materials Inc was second with 663 patent applications, followed by US-based IC designer Qualcomm Inc with 582, Japan-based semiconductor supplier Tokyo Electron Ltd with 496 and electrical products maker Nitto Denko Corp with 403.
The number of applications by Qualcomm fell 42 percent from a year earlier due to a relatively high comparison base in 2018, when it filed more than 1,000 applications, Hong said.
Last year, the office received 74,652 applications, up 2 percent from a year earlier, with invention applications making up 80 percent, the data showed.
Invention patent applications rose 8 percent from a year earlier, third consecutive year of increases, while design patent applications rose 10 percent, the office said.
Design patent applications fell slightly last year, the office added.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
RSS