Chinese companies have increased the number of U.S. patents they’ve received by tenfold in less than 10 years, another sign that the world’s second-largest economy is succeeding in its strategy to transform from Silicon Valley’s factory to a powerhouse of research.
Chinese inventors received 11,241 U.S. patents last year, a 28 percent increase over the same period in 2016, according to a report released Tuesday by IFI Claims Patent Services, a unit of Fairview Research LLC. That propels the nation into the top five recipients for the first time, behind the U.S., Japan, Korea and Germany, but ahead of Taiwan.
