Jiwei Network News, with the theme of "ingenuity, silicon casting gold", the 2022 China Semiconductor Investment Alliance Annual Conference and China IC Award Ceremony was successfully held in Beijing on December 18. The 2021 Aiji Micro Professional Compilation Report Achievement Exhibition, as a highlight of this annual meeting, released and exhibited 15 blockbuster industry materials of "books + reports + white papers + policy compilations". Adhering to the principles of data supporting the industry, case evidence enterprises, policies pointing out the direction, and talent establishment, we depict a comprehensive blueprint for the "core" of industrial information.
Among them, the "Semiconductor Industry Intellectual Property White Paper (2021 Edition)", a total of 4 chapters and 11 subsections, mainly around the global patent data of the semiconductor industry, for the semiconductor industry as a whole and the five major modules (design, manufacturing, packaging and testing of the three links and semiconductor equipment, materials two pillar industries) respectively, from the patent application situation, patent applicants, patent operations, patent downstream applications from multiple angles to review and analyze, aiming to depict the overall development status and problems of patents in the semiconductor industry. Provide decision-making basis and reference for relevant units in the industry.
"Patent Panorama" under the Four Chapters
Chapter 1: The Development Status of the Semiconductor Industry. From the aspects of global and domestic semiconductor industry market size, global industrial transfer direction, and semiconductor industry chain composition, the global industrial pattern and technical decomposition basis of the semiconductor industry are comprehensively analyzed.
Chapter 2: Fundamentals of Patent Research in the Semiconductor Industry. The semiconductor industry is technically decomposed, the tools used in patent search, the geographical scope of patent data, the time range of patent data are explained, and the keywords and classification numbers used in patent search are given for each technology branch.
Chapter 3: Patent Layout in the Semiconductor Industry. For the semiconductor industry as a whole and the five modules, the trend of patent applications, the geographical distribution of patent targets, the geographical distribution of patent sources, the distribution of patent applicants, the distribution of Chinese patent provinces and cities, the legal status of Chinese invention patents, and the distribution of patent technologies are statistically analyzed, and the global patent situation of the semiconductor industry is displayed in a panoramic manner.
Chapter 4: Patent Operation and Application in the Semiconductor Industry. For the five modules of the semiconductor industry, the transfer, licensing, litigation and pledge of Chinese patents are counted respectively, and the characteristics of patent operations in the semiconductor industry are understood, reflecting the patent activity of the semiconductor industry. The fourth chapter also analyzes the distribution of patents in the downstream application areas of the semiconductor industry, showing the hot spots in the downstream application fields of semiconductors.
China has become an important target market for global patent applications
According to the data of the "White Paper", since the beginning of 2000, the number of Chinese patent applications in the semiconductor industry has 579886, and it has experienced a long-term growth trend overall. Patent filings have continued to grow rapidly for 20 years, surpassing the United States in 2017, and in the future, China and the United States will be the most important global patent application target markets for the semiconductor industry.
In terms of the distribution of provincial and municipal sources of Chinese patents, the number of patent applications in Suzhou, Guangdong and Shanghai exceeds that of other provinces and cities combined, and the number of patent applications in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions significantly exceeds that of Beijing in the main gathering places of China's semiconductor industry.
China's semiconductor industry has developed rapidly and has become the world's third largest patent target market, but what needs to be vigilant is that the "White Paper" points out that the relevant patented technologies that are truly in the hands of China's innovative subjects account for only 5%, and most of the world's patented technologies are still monopolized by the United States and Japan. The innovation subjects of the United States and Japan have built a large number of patent barriers in China, which has hindered the development of China's semiconductor industry.
List of five module patent applications "TOP10"
In view of the newly disclosed global patents for materials, equipment, design, manufacturing, packaging and testing modules since 2016, the White Paper shows the TOP10 patent applicants for each module.
In terms of semiconductor materials, the TOP10 are TSMC, Samsung, Sumitomo, Shingoku, Shenggao, Applied Materials, IBM, Intel, SMIC, and Fujifilm.
In the material module, mask plates, target material patents, bonding wires, and lead frame barriers are the highest, and electronic gas, silicon wafers, and lead frames have the highest research and development heat.
In terms of semiconductor equipment, the TOP10 are TSMC, Tokyo Electronics, Disco, IBM, Applied Materials, ASML, Samsung, Canon, ZEISS, and Grofound. The technical links of disco and ASML patent layouts are highly concentrated, and the technical links of the remaining innovative entities are widely distributed.
In the equipment module, the patent barrier of lithography machine, etching/degumming/ashing, patching, dicing, welding, defect detection, probe testing system is high, etching/degling/ashing, diffusion/oxidation/annealing, wet etching, cleaning equipment, coating/development equipment, monocrystalline furnace, patch, dicing, welding, plastic sealing, defect detection, and film thickness measurement equipment are hot technologies.
In terms of semiconductor design, the TOP10 are Qualcomm, Micron, Huawei, Samsung, SK Hynix, Intel, Toshiba, BOE, MediaTek, and IBM. The United States and South Korea still have technological advantages, and the patent layout of Chinese local enterprises for semiconductor technology in China needs to be improved.
Among the design modules, comparators, voltage regulators, processors, memory, power pipes, switch chips, and automotive electronics patent barriers are high, comparators, voltage regulators, and analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog converters, processors, memory and logic devices, wireless connection chips, set-top box chips, power management, automotive electronics, and RF front-ends are hot technologies.
In terms of semiconductor manufacturing, the TOP10 are Yangtze River Storage, Samsung, Micron, Toshiba, Scarlett, SanDisk, Qualcomm, TSMC, Intel, and Murata Electronics. Among the top ten global patent applicants for manufacturing modules, many companies are involved in the field of memory chip manufacturing, which is related to the main position of memory chips in integrated circuit products.
Among the manufacturing modules, DRAM, DAND FLASH memory chips, and RF devices have high patent barriers, and DAND FLASH and RF devices are hot technologies.
In terms of semiconductor packaging and testing, the TOP10 are TSMC, Intel, Samsung, Sun Moonlight, Changdian, Texas Instruments, IBM, Infineon, Micron, and Qualcomm. Among them, Changdian Technology is the only Chinese mainland enterprise on the list.
Among the packaging and test modules, flip-down, multi-chip modules, micro-mechanical systems, and convex package patent barriers are high, and silicon through-hole technology and 3D packaging technology are hot technologies.
Design module patent transfer, licensing, litigation accounted for the highest proportion
In view of the transfer, licensing, litigation and pledge of Chinese patents for the five major modules of the semiconductor industry, the White Paper has carried out statistics and analysis respectively.
From the perspective of the proportion of Chinese patent transfer in the semiconductor industry, the design module patent transfer accounted for the highest proportion (7.57%), nearly double the second place of the equipment module, the design module related patents mainly focus on the chip peripheral interface, circuit, control method and other technologies closely related to the terminal products of the semiconductor industry chain, and the patent transfer behavior may be attributed to the relatively low difficulty of obtaining evidence in the litigation of the relevant patent, forming a strong protection for the rights and interests of the applicant. The patent transfer behavior of equipment modules ranks second (3.89%), which may be due to the low difficulty of reverse engineering of equipment, it is easier to protect patents, and the demand for equipment in the industrial chain is lower than the number of semiconductor terminal products, so its patent transfer activity is lower than that of design modules. Materials, manufacturing modules, due to the high difficulty of reverse engineering of the corresponding products, it is not easy to obtain evidence, and the value of the sealing and testing modules is relatively low in the industrial chain, so the patent transfer of the three modules accounts for a relatively low proportion.
From the perspective of the proportion of Chinese patent licensing in the semiconductor industry, the patent licensing of design modules accounts for the highest proportion (1.74%), more than three times the second place of equipment modules, the patent licensing behavior of materials and equipment ranks second (0.51%, 0.46%), and the patent licensing behavior of packaging, testing and manufacturing modules accounts for the lowest proportion.
From the perspective of the proportion of patent litigation in China in the semiconductor industry, the proportion of patent litigation for design modules is the highest (0.33%), far exceeding that of other modules, and the frequency of patent litigation for other modules is relatively low.
From the perspective of China's patent pledge, the pledge of equipment modules accounts for the highest proportion (0.78%), the pledge proportion of sealing and testing and material modules ranks second and third, and the pledge of design modules accounts for the lowest proportion. (Proofreading/Xiaobei)