According to the latest "Global Intelligent Driving Patent Panorama Research Report" (hereinafter referred to as the research report), a global professional information service provider, the mainland has become the world's largest source of intelligent driving patents and the target market for patent layout, and Baidu's intelligent driving patent family ranks first in the world.
Mainland intelligent driving patent layout six years to grind a sword
Although the data for 2020 and 2021 remain incomplete, the number of patent families in autonomous driving and intelligent transportation worldwide roughly doubled between 2016 and 2019, from 4521 to 9039. The number of patent families disclosed after 2016 exceeded the previous total.
The research report believes that the number of applications for intelligent driving patents around the world is accelerating, thanks in part to the high-intensity research and development innovation of mainland enterprises.
In 2018, the number of patent applications in the field of intelligent driving in the mainland was far lower than that of the United States, Japan, South Korea and european union countries, less than one-tenth of that of Europe, the United States and Japan, although domestic companies such as Baidu have begun to invest in research and development, but they are still insufficient in terms of patent accumulation. At that time, none of the world's top ten applicants were Chinese companies, and most of the patents applied for in China were filed by foreign companies.
The mainland has achieved catch-up in 6 years. The research report shows that China and the United States have become the main sources of global intelligent driving invention patents. 43% of the world's intelligent driving invention patents come from China, followed by the United States with 25%. South Korea, Germany and Japan contributed 9%, 8% and 8% respectively.
At the same time, China has also become the world's largest patent layout target market, with 58% of the world's patents deployed in China, the second place in the United States with 40%, and Germany's third accounting for 11%.
Among them, Baidu's sudden rise has contributed to the mainland's occupation of the global intelligent driving patent highland, and the number of its high-level autonomous driving patent families has jumped to the first place in the world.
According to the research report, among the top 20 companies in the world in terms of patent applications, only two Chinese companies, Baidu ranked first, Huawei ranked ninth, the rest mainly from the United States, Japan and South Korea, Toyota, Ford, LG, Hyundai, Samsung, Honda and so on are impressively listed. This shows that most of the intelligent driving patent applications in the mainland come from many small and medium-sized start-ups and scientific research institutions, which also means that the mainland still has a lot of room for growth, and it needs to cultivate more companies to grow into companies like Baidu and Huawei.
The mainland has issued a number of policy documents to promote the development of intelligent driving. The "Made in China 2025" issued by the State Council in 2015 proposes to establish a sound independent research and development system, production support and industrial cluster of intelligent and connected vehicles by 2025; In February 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 11 ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Intelligent Vehicle Innovation Development Strategy", pointing out that it is necessary to ensure the large-scale production of L2 level automatic driving in 2025 from the aspects of key technologies, testing and evaluation, application demonstration, infrastructure, network communication, standards and regulations, quality supervision, and network security, and the market-oriented application of L3 level in specific environments.
At the same time, a large number of enterprises in the field of intelligent driving research and development have emerged in the mainland, and the number of patent applications has also shown explosive growth. According to the data of the Electronic Intellectual Property Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Intellectual Property Office, from 2016 to 2020, the number of enterprises that submit patent applications has increased from 966 to 2479 per year, and the number of new patent families has increased from 2852 to 9750 per year. From 2017 to 2020, more than 1,400 companies filed patent applications every year, of which more than 1,000 were new entrants, and more than 60% of enterprises were first-time applicants. Companies like Meituan and Xiaoma Zhixing have only newly joined the field of intelligent driving in the past 5 years.
Baidu leads the rise of the mainland's intelligent driving power
In the field of smart driving, Baidu is a heavyweight player, and its patent applications have gradually increased since 2016. In recent years, Baidu has developed rapidly in the field of intelligent driving patents (autonomous driving patents and intelligent transportation patents), with a growth rate higher than the global average.
According to the research report, Baidu ranks first in the world with 1537 high-level autonomous driving patent families, toyota is 1347 in the second place, 1071 in the third place Ford, and ninth in Huawei with 755 items. In addition, Baidu has 925 patent families in the field of intelligent transportation, second only to Toyota's 1016, in the first echelon.
Baidu Apollo's self-driving travel service platform "Radish Run" opened commercial operation
In terms of patent quality, according to the patent quality evaluation of the research report, Baidu's patent quality is good, and the patent portfolio is young (the remaining life is long), so it has strong competitiveness.
Intelligent driving is considered one of the top projects of artificial intelligence. Baidu has been laying out intelligent driving since 2013, and is one of the earliest companies in China to lay out intelligent driving, and launched the world's first open platform for autonomous driving, Apollo, in 2017. At present, Baidu Apollo has become an active open platform for autonomous driving in the world, with more than 210 global ecological partners, and has industry-leading solutions in the fields of autonomous driving, intelligent cars and intelligent transportation. At the just-concluded Apollo Day Technology Open Day with the theme of "Driving to the Future", relevant information showed that after nine years of research and development and practice, Baidu Apollo is leading the global autonomous driving journey through unmanned technology breakthroughs and commercial operation achievements.
As one of the landing projects, Baidu's self-driving travel service platform "Radish Run" mainly uses autonomous vehicles (Robotaxi) to carry out autonomous driving operations, and has fully opened manned operation services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Changsha, Yangquan and other cities. Beijing, Chongqing and Yangquan have already carried out commercial operation pilots.
Baidu also jointly released the Apollo Air plan with the Intelligent Industry Research Institute of Tsinghua University, which is the world's first and only vehicle-road collaboration technology that uses pure roadside perception capabilities to achieve open road continuous road network L4 automatic driving closed-loop technology, reflecting the highest technical capabilities in the field of vehicle-road collaboration.
Baidu reconstructs cars, transportation and cities with "smart cars" and "smart roads" that are independent and controllable by technology, realizing the transformation from intelligent driving to intelligent transportation, and helping to build a transportation power.
The technologies and models explored by Baidu have brought more opportunities to small and medium-sized enterprises and creators. The "ACE Intelligent Transportation Engine" solution with autonomous driving, vehicle-road collaboration and MaaS travel as the core engine has been implemented in more than 50 cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Changsha and Suzhou, promoting the intelligentization of infrastructure, intelligent transportation equipment and convenient travel services, and working with partners to build a new intelligent transportation ecology.
With a long cycle of R&D investment and operation accumulation, Baidu intelligent driving technology has been in the global leader camp.
"Mainland autonomous driving is in a critical period of large-scale landing, technological innovation is active, and as the country strengthens the protection and application of intellectual property rights, the layout and application of high-value patents have become the top priority." Baidu uses its leading patent advantages to create an intellectual property ecology in the artificial intelligence industry, promote cross-border integration and innovation, and promote the high-quality development of the industry with high-value patents. Cui Lingling, general manager of Baidu's patent affairs department, said.
The development of Baidu's smart driving patents is just a microcosm of the development of its artificial intelligence patents. As early as 2010, Baidu began artificial intelligence technology innovation and patent layout. According to public data, Baidu's artificial intelligence patent applications, authorizations, high-value patents and innovation drivers rank first in China, and the quality of patents is leading in China.
Transportation is the key to rejuvenating the country and the foundation of a strong country. Intelligent driving technology has become an important driving force for the development of the transportation and automobile industry, and intelligent driving patents are an important engine for driving high-quality development. The scientific and technological innovation force represented by Baidu, through the accumulation of the world's leading technology and patents, boosts the construction of a transportation power, leads the intelligent car to the era of fully unmanned, and makes the people's transportation travel better.
Song Zifeng, director of the Research Office of the Industrial Economic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, believes that driverless cars are a complex of a series of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced machine vision systems, sensors, and instant communication systems, and are recognized as subversive innovative products. This will not only have a significant impact on the automotive industry itself, but will also bring profound and lasting changes to the transportation system, energy system, and urban form. (Text/Cao Xiaolin)