Recently, the Wisdom Buds Innovation Research Center, a subsidiary of Wisdom Buds, a scientific and technological innovation and intellectual property information service provider, released the "2024 Global Enterprise Intellectual Property Innovation Research Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), which deeply presents the latest trends of global enterprise intellectual property and discusses the response to enterprise intellectual property and R&D work under the wave of AI.
According to the report, global enterprise IP teams actively recognize the value of generative AI for IP work, especially in the empowerment of patent search and reading, and about 12% of the surveyed companies in China have explored the implementation of generative AI tools in patent work scenarios.
From the macro perspective of the industry, although the growth rate of the intellectual property work budget of technology enterprises has slowed down, more than 74% of enterprises still have the confidence to continue to release the diversified value of patents; specifically, the asset value of patents has accelerated, and the recognition of patents by enterprises has increased by 25% year-on-year; and the awareness of the value of patent information by the intellectual property and R&D departments of enterprises has gradually converged, with a gap of less than 10%.
"In the past year, generative AI has swept across the world, and as a service provider in the technology innovation ecosystem, we firmly believe that the butterfly wings of generative AI will bring a new paradigm revolution in the industry, and the intellectual property industry is about to usher in the 'iPhone moment'," said Tao Dongyan, head of Wisdom Buds Innovation Research Center. Therefore, this year's report focuses on the theme of 'AI Renewing Intellectual Property', and is committed to depicting the current panorama of AI applications in the field of intellectual property, finding a way for macro industry reform, providing inspiration for individual practice, and empowering global scientific and technological innovation. ”
Generative AI reinvents the IP paradigm
Global enterprise IP teams actively embrace the value of generative AI
In the field of intellectual property, a new round of AI revolution is about to begin. Intellectual property, especially in the field of patents, is at the forefront of the generative AI revolution in the face of generative AI as the most convenient type of text, with the trainability of high-quality datasets, the parvability of structured text, and the approximation of content generation.
IP teams at tech companies around the world have shown similarly positive sentiment towards generative AI, with 58% of respondents believing that the benefits of using generative AI in their IP work will "outweigh the disadvantages." In contrast, the IP teams of overseas companies are more optimistic, with 43.5% of respondents agreeing that "the benefits outweigh the disadvantages", slightly higher than the Chinese respondents (39.2%) by 4 percentage points.
Figure: The overall attitude of Chinese enterprise IP teams towards the use of generative AI in patent work (Source: Wisdom Buds)
Generative AI tools are highly anticipated in enterprise patent search and reading scenarios
The application of generative AI to the patent work of enterprises is expected to reshape eight typical work modules, including monitoring, searching, summarizing, analyzing, writing, and collaborating.
Specifically, scenarios such as "find-read-analyze" patents for generative AI innovation are the focus of most attention and expectation from enterprises. Among them, the "expectation value" of about 3.8 (out of 5) for patent search and patent reading was obtained, and the expectation of overseas companies was even as high as 4.1-4.2. Similarly, in the patent analysis link after "search-read", its optimization needs are also widely expected, with a score of about 3.7. As a systematic work module that integrates the "find-read-analyze" patent, R&D trend monitoring has high expectations from domestic and foreign IP decision-makers, with a score of 3.8.
It is worth noting that in the natural language-based collaboration scenario, the expectations of Chinese enterprise IP decision-makers for generative AI are higher than those overseas, with an average score of about 3.6, which is significantly higher than the 3.2-3.3 range of overseas respondents.
Figure: The expectations of Chinese enterprise IP teams for the empowerment direction of generative AI (Source: Wisdom Buds)
12% of Chinese companies surveyed are exploring the implementation of generative AI tools in patent work scenarios
The application of generative AI tools in the IP scenario of Chinese enterprises is in its infancy. In general work scenarios, such as document writing, PPT production, image generation, etc., 33.8% of the IP teams of the surveyed enterprises have started to use generative AI tools, which is slightly higher than that of their overseas counterparts. However, in the core patent work scenarios, including patent search, analysis, drafting, and management, 65.7% of enterprises have not yet considered introducing tools based on generative AI, 22.5% of enterprises have begun to discuss the introduction, and nearly 12% of the surveyed enterprises have begun to pilot or large-scale application.
In contrast, a higher proportion of overseas companies have begun to actively embrace changes in the IP scenario, and the application of generative AI tools is on the rise. More than one-third of overseas companies surveyed are experimenting with proprietary tools based on generative AI, a figure that is more than three times that of Chinese respondents. Among them, 26% have already started pilot use, and 10% have even been used on a large scale.
Figure: The extent to which Chinese enterprise IP teams are currently applying generative AI in patent professional scenarios (Source: Wisdom Buds)
It is worth mentioning that the IP team, which has a large workload, started to explore generative AI-based proprietary tools earlier. According to the survey results, about 43% of companies with more than 200 annual patent applications have begun to discuss or pilot generative AI-based patent tools, while only about 28%-35% of companies with less than 200 annual patent applications have been evaluated. However, from the perspective of the front line of application tools, the small number of enterprise intellectual property teams that are truly applied on a large scale are more flexible small and medium-sized intellectual property teams, and the annual patent application volume of these enterprises does not exceed 200.
Figure: The extent to which Chinese enterprise IP teams with different work sizes are currently applying generative AI in patent professional scenarios (Source: Wisdom Buds)
Gain insight into the latest trends in global IP work
The growth rate of IP budgets of technology companies has slowed, while most companies still have confidence in the multiple value of patents
In addition to forward-looking portraying the process of generative AI to rejuvenate enterprise intellectual property and R&D innovation scenarios, Wisdom Buds' "2024 Global Enterprise Intellectual Property Innovation Research Report" continues the enterprise research of the past two years and continues to gain insight into the latest trends in global enterprise intellectual property work.
The survey results show that in 2024, the intellectual property work of Chinese technology enterprises will show a trend of "tight budget preparation". On average, the budget of the respondents' IP work dropped to less than RMB 1 million. Unlike last year's distribution of "less than 1 million" and "100-5 million" accounting for 40% each, this year's enterprises with "less than 1 million" intellectual property budget have risen to 60%, becoming the most common allocation scale. At the same time, from the perspective of growth, as many as 65% of enterprises said that the intellectual property budget will increase by less than 5% this year.
Figure: 2024 IP budget investment of Chinese technology enterprises (source: Wisdom Buds)
However, in the three-level value system of patents, enterprises' recognition of the status quo of patent ontology, business value and asset value has increased by about 3.9%, 15% and 24.9% respectively. In addition, most enterprises still have confidence in the value of patent-enabled enterprise development, with 74.4% of the surveyed enterprises believing that patents will play a greater role in the development of enterprises. It can be seen that in the face of the slowdown in the investment of intellectual property resources, the intellectual property departments of Chinese technology enterprises are constantly cultivating their internal skills, continuing to explore the boundaries of intellectual property empowerment and contribution to enterprises, and expanding the multiple value of intellectual property with limited resources.
The asset value of patents has accelerated to the fore
According to the report, the asset value of patents, which is regarded as a unique asset for enterprises, to help companies generate business income and expand financial financing, increased by 24.9% year-on-year. The reason for this may be that under the promotion of China's special action on the transformation and application of patents launched in 2023, the intangible asset value of patents has begun to appear on the stage of intellectual property work of more technology enterprises.
Figure: The degree of recognition of the multi-level value of patents by Chinese technology enterprises (Source: Wisdom Buds)
From the perspective of the industry, patent transfer is the most popular in the automotive industry, with 46.7% of the surveyed companies in the automotive industry saying that they have carried out patent transfer work. At the same time, given that consumer electronics products are highly dependent on international standards and standard essential patents, consumer electronics companies are the most active in patent licensing, with 47.1% of consumer electronics companies carrying out patent licensing work in the past 2-3 years.
The awareness of the value of patent information in the intellectual property and R&D departments of enterprises is gradually becoming more and more aligned
The business value of patents, that is, the value of patent work spilled over, directly supporting the company's business, including the provision of technical intelligence, increased by about 15% year-on-year. According to statistics, 95.1% of enterprises recognize the value of patent technology intelligence to empower many business tasks such as strategic direction formulation and R&D idea breakthroughs. At the same time, patent information is gradually playing a greater role in all aspects of technology research and development of Chinese science and technology enterprises, and compared with last year, the number of Chinese science and technology enterprises that believe that patent information plays a role in the process of technology research and development has increased by one to two percent.
Further, both at home and abroad, the intellectual property departments and R&D departments of technology enterprises are gradually becoming more aware of the value of patent information. Among the Chinese companies surveyed this year, 91.4% of the IP sector agreed on the value of patent intelligence, while 85.7% of the R&D department agreed, a difference of only 6%, compared to 10 percentage points last year. The same characteristics were also shown by overseas respondents, with 87.6% of the IP sector and 82.4% of the R&D sector agreeing with the technical intelligence value of patents, a difference of only 5 percentage points.
Figure: Recognition of patent technology information by different departments of Chinese technology enterprises in 2024 (Source: Wisdom Buds)
It is worth mentioning that the difficulties encountered by Chinese technology enterprises in the process of using patent information have decreased to varying degrees. Among them, the number of enterprises that believe that "targeted patents are difficult to find" and "patent texts are lengthy and obscure" have decreased by more than 5% compared with last year. The main reason for this decline may be due to the growing understanding of the content of R&D by IP personnel and the better support they can provide for R&D. According to the survey results, 37.6% of IP decision-makers and 43.9% of R&D decision-makers believed that IP personnel lacked understanding of R&D content last year, and this year, these two proportions have dropped to 31.8% and 32.9% respectively.
Figure: Difficulties encountered by Chinese technology companies in the process of using patented technology information in 2024 (Source: Wisdom Buds)
For the third consecutive year, Wisdom Buds released the "Global Enterprise Intellectual Property Innovation Research Report". This year's report in-depth research on more than 600 outstanding technology companies in more than 10 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, listening to the voices of intellectual property decision-makers and R&D decision-makers in various industries, and gathering innovation models from 10 global leading companies, including OPPO, Huahai Pharmaceutical, Goodix, Chambroad, United Imaging Healthcare, AAC Technologies, Shanghai Pharmaceutical, Visionox, Sungrow, and China Unicom Research Institute, in an effort to present the latest achievements and challenges, values and propositions of global enterprise intellectual property work. Actions and thinking help the scientific and technological innovation ecosystem to gain a comprehensive insight into the most cutting-edge trends.