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AI China Patents

Chinese University Collected More AI Patents Than MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard Combined (bloomberg.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Tsinghua University collected 4,986 AI and machine learning patents between 2005 and the end of 2024. The Beijing institution has received more than 900 patents last year alone. The total exceeds the combined patent count from MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard during the same period. China now accounts for more than half of all active patent families globally in AI and machine learning fields, according to data analytics service LexisNexis.

The university also has more AI research papers among the 100 most cited than any other school at last count. The US still holds the most influential AI patents and the top performing models. Harvard and MIT consistently rank ahead of Tsinghua in patent influence. American institutions produced 40 notable AI models in 2024 compared to 15 from Chinese organizations, according to Stanford's AI Index Report. China's share of the world's elite AI researchers -- the top 2% -- rose from 10% in 2019 to 26% in 2022. The US share fell from 35% to 28% during the same period, according to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
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Chinese University Collected More AI Patents Than MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard Combined More

Chinese University Collected More AI Patents Than MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard Combined

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  • Quantity has a quality all its own.

  • The Patent System (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Puls4r ( 724907 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2025 @11:56AM (#65804617)
    China taking a hint from our patent trolls. Just patent everything you can think of. There's no drawback. Down the road, you may hit it big if something you patented happens to be important. Then you can sue or force licensing agreements.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Software-based patents should be tossed, they cause more problems than they solve. It only enriches lawyers and judges.

    • Make a random patent generator. First spit out sentences, and then try to feed that to AI to assess and create a patent around. For example, at some point a 3 word sentence and a dictionary from the year 1850 would have the words "random patent generator", "electric voice transmitter", "winged flying chariot", "dexterous automated horse" etc. From a 1950 dictionary you could invent microchips "electronics on substrate". In theory with a 6 word sentence and a modern dictionary, you can probably can invent a

  • Interesting to see all the deniers here.
    China is ahead in robotics, automobiles, and manufacturing of all kinds.
    The US is "great" at borrowing money and buying stuff from the rest of the world.
    Oh yes, don't forget our military bases all over the world. All these do is cost money and make people hate the US.
    The US has lost the plot. It's not military power, the winning ticket is economic power and China has it.

    • Arguably the US is still great. It's the world's prime military power by a wide margin, and has the most economic power still.

      What's shocking is that instead of working to maintain that soft power, the current government is actively undermining it. Science is just one more example where we could easily be first, but chose (via the administration) not to. Education as a whole is no longer valued, and there's so much misinformation that it seems most people have just stopped believing in facts. All of these

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        To be fair, there are lots of negatives about the Chinese approach. And we're so used to the negatives of the US approach that we almost don't see them...but other people do.

        As "dominant world power"s go, the US has been quite lenient. This is known as damning with faint praise. OTOH, China shows every sign of being going to be worse...but probably not worse than Britain was.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I think China would be worse than Britain. The Brits did some good karma things, like eradicating, or at least trying to eradicate, slavery everywhere they went.
          The big problem with being a world power is, despite good intentions of a large part of the gov't and people, you do have a big imbalance of power, and some bad apples on the world power's side are going to try to take advantage of that. They'll go in and exploit a group of people, and if the group of people gets riled up and tries to throw them o

        • For sure, there are! You can't publicly complain about the government in China, and as much as Trump is thin-skinned, his reactions to criticisms aren't to the level of the CCP. Their economic and political model is also so top-heavy, if the president is a mad king, the impacts will be much worse, much faster, than a mad king in the White House. There's a lot of risk there.

          As for showing every sign of going to be worse... I don't know. I think that's where western propaganda is working extremely well, peo

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            China has a history of not caring about people outside it's borders. This long predates the CCP.

  • patents issued by WHICH government? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2025 @12:51PM (#65804761)

    I tried to figure that out from what I could see of the Bloomburg article, but wasn't sure if this was registrations in US Patent Office, worldwide, China, etc.

  • The fact of the matter is the world has already innovated us to this point and further innovation beyond is just going to be hard. It's nice that China is now in a position to try and help, even if it's a bit late.
  • If patents are to protect IP...
  • This is not to contest the underlying assertion that U.S. colleges may need to step up, but comparing patent filing and patent issuance numbers is not an effective way of assessing the strength of any entity's contribution to a field of study. Because of the difference in each country's IP laws, what constitutes a "patent" is significantly going to impact what is reported. A specific example, China's IP system includes a Utility Model patent process that allows for an application to become a patent (with

  • The 2024 list (https://academyofinventors.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2.24.25-Top-100-WW-list.pdf) has Tsinghua University ranked at #16 with 139 utility patents.

    Tsinghua must've been saving up.

    As to why Bloomberg chose the US University comparison cohort, the question is why to include Princeton (#98, 38 patents) when there are dozens of other US Universities with higher counts. Maybe Bloomberg doesn't understand that Purdue (#7, 213 patents) isn't in New Jersey?

  • All patents should be revoked. Too often they make no sense and worse, they make nothing. But his trophy wife's woeful PhD from MIT debacle revealed so many people have names on patents they mean no one owns them. I suspect this is how nations like Israel and China have stolen so much IP from the US and Europe. Muddy the patent names with 20+ "inventors", no matter their incompetence, and they can legitimately claim them.

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