When Chinese President Xi Jinping announced strong back up for blockchain engineering terminal month, pundits suggested that China would soon overtake the United States in dominating blockchain innovations. Our patent enquiry at the Blockchain Center of Excellence at the University of Arkansas finds that Communist china is already winning the Intellectual Property arms race against the U.Due south.

We examined blockchain-related patents that were granted from January 2022 to October 2022 by People's republic of china's patent office, the National Intellectual Property Administration, or CNIPA, and the U.Southward. Patent and Trademark Role, or USPTO. During this flow, the CNIPA awarded 2,218 blockchain patents compared to 227 by the USPTO.

The difference in numbers betwixt U.S. and Chinese patents is slightly misleading, as the CNIPA awarded almost twoscore blockchain-related patents to U.S.-based global companies such as Goldman Sachs, IBM, Intel, JP Morgan, Mastercard, Microsoft and Visa. In contrast, the USPTO has not awarded blockchain-related patents to any Chinese-based organizations. This blueprint holds more widely, according to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, which plant that only 4.17% of 1.ii million Chinese patent applications were filed overseas in 2022, whereas 43% of 521,802 U.South. patent applications were filed overseas. Perhaps U.S. organizations worry more near protecting their IP overseas than Chinese organizations do, or peradventure this trend reflects a distrust in the patentability of the Chinese applications made overseas, as only six.31% of the overseas patent applications filed by Chinese firms are granted.

Furthermore, the Chinese patent office expedited the patent process more than quickly than the U.South., taking just six months on average from patent filing to credence compared to 20 months in the U.S. Several explanations for this are possible: People's republic of china may have more resources devoted to patent processing, or Cathay's patent process might non be equally rigorous as information technology is in the U.S. Meredith Lowry, a patent attorney for Wright Lindsey Jennings, shared in a private interview:

"Blockchain patent applications in the U.s. patent process face additional hurdles to prove the invention is patentable subject matter and more than the employ of an algorithm. The bar for patentable subject area isn't as high in other countries like China."

We besides analyzed the data to determine the top categories of innovations protected past the blockchain-related patents, and the top patent owners in each country.

The IP being protected

The CNIPA and USPTO require patent applicants to utilize the International Patent Classification for categorizing their patent filings. Each patent typically includes multiple IPC codes. In both countries, the three most oftentimes occurring IPC codes for blockchain-related patents were G06, H04 and G07:

G06 (Computing; Calculating; Counting) — covers innovations associated with the mathematics of computing, image information processing and data generation.

H04 (Electric Advice Technique) — covers a broad range of electronic communications including transmissions, broadcasts, and secret communications over wired or wireless networks.

G07 (Checking-devices) — covers innovations associated with registering the receipt of cash or tokens, the handling of coins or valuables, metering tolls and fares, generating random numbers for lotteries, systems for voting, and more than.

Elevation CNIPA and USPTO patent owners

Nosotros extracted the meridian patent owners of granted blockchain-related technology patents past the CNIPA and USPTO. In the table below, we focus on only the top iii in each state. Communist china United Network Communications Group Co., or Cathay Unicom; Alibaba; and NChain Holdings are the superlative patent owners granted past the CNIPA, while IBM, Accenture and Mastercard are the pinnacle patent owners granted by the USPTO and also concord patents from the CNIPA.

Sample patents include:

  • Mainland china Unicom — A Chinese, government-owned, telecommunications provider. It has the most patents granted by the CNIPA, with 54 thus far. One of its patents defines a method for tracking food quality on a blockchain application (Patent 108537558A).
  • Alibaba — founded by Jack Ma in 1999 and now the world'due south largest online retailer. It has the second-highest number of CNIPA patents awarded, at 51. Alibaba, for example, has a patent for a music originality assay method and device based on a blockchain (Patent 108595709A).
  • Nchain Holdings — has the third-highest number of patents awarded past the CNIPA, at 37. Nchain is a company based in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland seeking to make cryptocurrencies more than globally usable. One patent describes an operating organisation for IoT devices controlled by a blockchain. Each IoT device has an IP address and a cryptographic public-private central pair. Software controls the device through instructions that require access to the private central (Patent 109089427A).
  • IBM — an American multinational information technology company. Information technology owns the almost patents granted by the USPTO. Amongst its 34 patents, one provides a way to maintain and verify the status of accounts in multiplayer games (Patent 10348487).
  • Accenture — a global professional services firm that is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. It has 23 patents from the USPTO. Accenture, for example, patented its invention for an interoperability node that connects dissimilar blockchains using null-noesis proofs (Patent 10298395).
  • Mastercard — a global financial services company headquartered in New York City. Mastercard holds nine patents with the USPTO, i of which is a smart parking meter verification method using a blockchain (Patent 10198949).

This Nov, Mainland china signaled that it may strengthen its IP laws. The charge per unit of blockchain-related patent protection in the state is accelerating, with the sheer number of China'south blockchain-related patents outpacing the rate of the U.Due south., but contributing to these numbers are U.S. companies filing patents in multiple locations to increment their IP protection globally. Therefore, while China may appear to be accelerating across the U.S. in patent approvals on the surface, multiple leading global companies operate in both countries and protect their intellectual property equally such.

The bottom line

Blockchain-related patents are just 1 indicator of a land's blockchain authority. Favorable regulations, the number of job vacancies, the prevalence and level of financial support provided to blockchain-startups, active participation in global policy-making bodies, and the number of blockchain solutions in production are other metrics beingness explored past the Blockchain Center of Excellence at the University of Arkansas.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or correspond the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Mary Lacity is a Walton professor of information systems and the director of the Blockchain Center of Excellence at the Academy of Arkansas.

Zach Steelman is an assistant professor of information systems at the University of Arkansas.

Jacob Yates is a graduate student in the information systems department at the University of Arkansas.

Jia Wei is a Ph.D. pupil in the information systems department at the University of Arkansas.

The Blockchain Center of Excellence (BCoE) is housed in the Information Systems Department of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. The BCoE was officially launched by U.South. State Governor of Arkansas, the Honorable Asa Hutchinson, on Aug. 1, 2022. The center's vision is to make the Sam M. Walton College of Business a premier academic leader in blockchain application research and education.