Industry 4.0: Spanish patents of the largest technology companies

Abstract

A total of 2555 records were found, placing Spain in 15th position in the world, led by China and the USA, while Europe is in a discreet second place. European companies are mixed with Asian and US companies to a lesser extent. All three companies are heavily involved in the 5G technologies field. Figure 1 shows companies with at least 15 patents, where Qualcomm stands out, followed by Huawei and Ericsson. All three companies are heavily involved in the 5G technologies field.

Most of these companies are technology companies specialized in microprocessors, computers, and telecommunications. Only one is not a company: the well-known German research institution Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (mp3 developers). The only Spanish company in this ranking is Telefónica.

Although most companies are widely known, how important are they worldwide? Is there a relationship between their Spanish patents and their worldwide patents? For this purpose, we have constructed the chart in Figure 2, with the above information and the ranking of the 25 worldwide most essential companies by 4IR patenting in the last two decades made by the EPO.

The first thing that stands out in the chart is the position of Qualcomm and Samsung (Korea). As shown in Figure 1, Qualcomm is the leader in Spanish patents, although it is not the world leader. The opposite is true for Samsung, the world leader with more than twice as many patents but very little presence in Spain. Then there are LG Group (Korea) and Sony (Japan), which have a world position like Qualcomm (more than 6k) and similar to Samsung in Spain. There are seven companies between 3k and 5k, but only Huawei and Ericsson stand out in Spain, as mentioned above. Below 3k, two European companies and one American, Alphabet, we thought we would find a little higher in the world ranking. As it appears, autonomous driving has not yet created many patents.

Samsung is the leader in 4IR patents and technology patents in general. Samsung Electronics alone has more than 255k patents in total, but if we add all the subsidiaries, it reaches a little less than 380k. There is little interest in Spain, with so many patents globally, which must have been covered with its EPO patents. The only European patent office that seems to take it seriously is the German one (DPMA).

Of the three companies that seem to pay attention to the Spanish office, we can only say that they are in the middle of the global war on 5G. The 5G battlefield leads companies to be very careful and cover their intellectual property even in small offices such as the OEPM. Huawei is the company that has taken the lead but is being censored by the USA. The only company with a comprehensive option for 5G (outside Huawei) is the European Ericsson. Apart from the political war over 5G, it must be remembered that Qualcomm has had an intense legal fight for patents with giants such as Intel or Apple in recent years. What is truly curious is that the European country where Qualcomm has the most patents is Spain.