Page 67 - 2018 Annual Report Taiwan Intellectual Property Office

TIPO ANNUAL REPORT
Patent Trend Analysis Report of Solar Photovoltaic Industry
Based on the light absorbing material, solar photovoltaic cells are classified into seven technical categories, including silicon wafer, silicon thin film, inorganic compound, organic, dye-sensitized, quantum dot and perovskite solar cells. In the report, we collected and analyzed overall trends in solar photovoltaic technology based on globally published patents between 2007 and 2017. The Derwent Innovation (DI) was used as the data source for global patent trend analysis. In addition, to supplement the number of patents from Taiwan in the DI, we added the published patents in Taiwan filed by all countries within the same time period by using the global patent search system for examiners.
The number of worldwide applications of various solar cells displays a trend of descending after ascending in Taiwan and IP5, as shown in the figure. Among the technical categories, the numbers of more commercially available solar cells such as silicon wafer solar cells reached the peak earlier. The number of patent applications of perovskite solar cells has increased since 2013. Perovskite solar cells now show conversion efficiency of up to 22%, almost as much as silicon wafer solar cells, the category with the highest market share.
Breakdown by nationality, almost all patent applications by residents of mainland China were filed domestically. The United States is the first choice for foreign applicants, while European applicants are most proactive in overseas patent portfolios on average (the largest in size in a single patent family). Asian companies are topping the ranking in the seven technical categories. Among them, Japanese and Korean companies account for three categories respectively, Mainland China companies account for one another category.
Number of applications of various solar cells around the world (priority year)
.
perovskite quantum dot dye-sensitized
organic
inorganic compound
silicon thin film silicon wafer
9 8
86 87
238 414
699 903
576 825
105 144
666 755
2006 2007
15 9 129 134 589 771
1168 1397
1112 1422
217 254
1111 1250
2008 2009
12 20 28 84 302 169 205 218 240 184 895 1001 943 762 522
1544 1763 2045 2022 1671 1503 1697 1661 1411 1108
269 302 296 249 151
1338 1629 1433 1347 1151
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
511 575 220 202
961 888 133 138 1104 1149
2015 2016
447
1583 1718
425
Note: numbers: numbers of applications, numbers in red: peak, numbers in blue italic: the lowest point after the peak.
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V IPR CREATION AND USE