Attendees are demonstrating Weigao’s surgical robot at the China Brand Day event held in Shanghai, China from May 10 to 14. / Capture from Sina.com
China’s influence was found to be overwhelming in technology patents that use artificial intelligence (AI) to read medical images such as X-rays, ultrasound, and CT.
On the 3rd, the Korean Intellectual Property Office analyzed the medical image analysis AI technology applied to the patent offices of major countries (IP5: Korea, US, EU, China, Japan) over the past 10 years from 2011 to 2020. As a result, the number of patent applications in China was 3,477. (39.8%). Second place was the United States with 1,733 cases (19.8%), third place was Korea with 1,057 cases (12.1%), fourth place was Japan with 980 cases (11.2%), and fifth place was Germany with 522 cases (6.0%).
Looking at the number of patent applications in 2020, China recorded 1,383 cases, which is 226 more than the United States (477 cases), Korea (407 cases), and Japan (273 cases) combined (1,157 cases). Last year, the number of patents for AI medical image reading technology in China was three times that of the United States and 3.4 times that of Korea.
When analyzing the volume of patent applications over the past 10 years by business, academia, etc., German and Japanese companies were dominant. Siemens Healthineers of Germany had the most cases with 393 (4.5%), followed by Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (2.6%, 229 cases) in second place, Canon Medical Systems of Japan (2.1%, 185 cases) in third place, and Fuji of Japan in fourth place. Film accounted for 2.0%, 173 cases.
Dutch Philips ranked 5th with 143 cases (1.6%). China’s Tencent ranked 6th with 138 cases (1.6%), and Shanghai United Imaging ranked 9th with 103 cases (1.2%). Samsung Electronics ranked 11th with 87 cases (1.0%). However, Yonsei University ranked 24th with 44 applications.
Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office
However, as of 2020, Philips had the most cases with 96, followed by Siemens (54 cases), Canon (51 cases), Tencent (48 cases), and Fujifilm (41 cases). Samsung Electronics only applied for four patents.
Meanwhile, the number of AI image reading technology patent applications worldwide grew at an average annual rate of 54.7% from 58 in 2011 to 2,946 in 2020. The average annual growth rate over the five years from 2016 to 2020 was 70.9%. Korea’s average annual growth rate was 67.1%, the second highest after China (86.8%).
The Herfindahl-Hirschman index, which indicates the concentration of patent applications, fell from 458 in 2011 to 46 in 2020. The higher the Hirschmann-Herfindahl index, the more monopolistic the technology is and the more difficult it is to enter the market. A lowering of this index means that patent barriers have been lowered. Jeon Beom-jae, head of the Artificial Intelligence Big Data Examination Department at the Korean Intellectual Property Office, explained, “As the patent barrier for medical image analysis AI technology is not high, it is expected to be a good opportunity for Korean small and medium-sized businesses.”
2023-10-03 03:00:00
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