When it comes to global expansion, Chinese Internet firms like Baidu, Alibaba, or Tencent are on the hop. Until now the giants of China’s Internet sector have been focused on the domestic market and still get a very small share of revenue from outside China. But some are trying to change that, increasing their presence overseas through investment and acquisition of both, companies and patents.
Messaging, e-commerce, and mobile payments are areas in which Chinese companies are genuine innovators, and some Chinese internet giants have already built significant portfolios. Alibaba paid Yahoo USD 70 million for patents and has also been assigned small portfolios by IBM and Intel.
Regarding patent application, Tencent has applied for 9540 domestic patents before 31. December 2015. Baidu and Qihoo360 followed with the application numbers 4440 and 4009. With an application number of 2450 Alibaba took the fourth place. Also worldwide Tencent took the first place with 17139 patents. The second and third place were taken by Alibaba and Baidu with 6540 and 4720 patents.
In the past potential patent litigation in Europe and North America was a main reason why Chinese players have focused on developing markets. But this is changing because these markets have proved to be disappointing. Now the major Chinese internet companies will acquire third party patents at the same rate as other Chinese tech players.
Statistic source: ip-watch.org
China Intellectual Property Blog 