TIPO Trend Analysis of Patent Applications filed by Universities and Colleges in Taiwan (Part II)

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Regarding the continuous decrease in the number of domestic patent application in Taiwan, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) trend analysis of patent applications filed by universities and colleges in Taiwan (Part I) has analyzed the number of application filed. In this TIPO trend analysis of patent applications filed by universities and colleges in Taiwan (Part II), the fields of application filed are analyzed.

In view of the fields of application, healthcare and medicine & biotechnology are the main fields of application. For example, in 2014, school held six seats in the top ten applicants of these two fields. Among them, the numbers and growths of application filed of National Chung Hsin University and National Tsing Hua University have good performances.

To understand the reason of the decrease in the application number of school, TIPO has conducted interviews with six schools with decreased application number since July 2015. The reasons are summarized as follows:

  1. For some schools, since the grant of “Project Toward Top University” provided by the Ministry of Education decreases over the years, subsidy for patent application fee provided by school to each teacher has decreased. Thus, the number of patent application filed has to be limited or the proportion of patent application fee that teacher is responsible for is increased.
  1. Since the key performance indicator (KPI) of another grant provided by the Ministry of Education focuses on patent technology transfer performance; thus, some schools strictly review and require assessment of the potentials of future commercialization and technology transfer before projects are proposed as well as require reports of technology transfer performance to be provided during patent application.
  1. The limited funding and the huge maintenance cost of patents allowed in previous years have forced schools to apply patents more conservatively. Some schools retrench expenses and ask teacher to cover part of the application fee, affecting proposal willingness of teacher.
  1. The Ministry of Science and Technology will cut subsidies next year from 80% to 60%, impacting the numbers of patent application of universities and colleges.

In summary, under the subsidy policy of the government, patent application of school has focused on quality instead of quantity. This trend has been gradually reflected in the number of application. However, in terms of long-term industry-school cooperation, it is very important to maintain a sufficient amount of high-quality patents. In order for domestic patents to have excellent quality, TIPO will coordinate with relevant government departments to elaborate supporting measures together.

 

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Taiwan Intellectual Property Office

http://www.tipo.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=569260&ctNode=7123&mp=1