II. Patent competitive edge of “211 Universities”

In this report, the formula of the patent competitiveness index of Chinese universities is:

The patent competitiveness index = (the number of patent licensing recordals in 2011 ÷ the number of patent applications between 2005 and 2009) × 500

Since the denominator is the number of patent applications of five years (between 2005 and 2009) whereas the numerator is the recorded contract amount of one year (2011), the result should be multiplied by 500 to get the average rate of patent licensing. For example, the patent application amount of Tsinghua University between 2005 and 2009 is 6,216, and its recorded patent licensing contract amount in 2011 is 23.

23÷6126×500=1.88

Therefore, the average patent licensing rate of Tsinghua University’s is 1.88%. Or in other words, among every 100 patents that Tsinghua University has applied for licensing between 2005 and 2009, 1.88 are licensed out in 2011, while the other 98.12 patents remain unlicensed.

According to the above formula, the patent competitive indexes of all 116 universities of “211 universities” in China could be calculated. However, there are nine universities of “211 universities” having neither patent application between 2005 and 2009 nor licensing contract in 2011. They are Central Conservatory of Music, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Central University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Tibet University, and National University of Defense Technology. Taking that the first eight of the foresaid universities dedicate to education and research in humanities and social sciences and have no patent application, they are excluded in the ranking. The National University of Defense Technology may have national defense patents which are not included in the database, but since the actual situation could not be figured out, it was not included into the research either. Consequently, the ranking of the patent competitiveness indexes of “211 universities” includes only 107 universities.

Besides the aforesaid nine universities, there are another 28 universities which have no recorded patent licensing contracts in 2011, such as Peking Union Medical College, Beijing Sport University, Minzu University of China, Qinghai University and Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. However, they did apply for patents between 2005 and 2009, and the application amounts of some of them are quiet large. Thus, these universities should not be excluded from the research. According to the formula, since they have no recorded patent licensing contracts, their competitiveness index should all be 0.00.

List I is the overall patent competitiveness indexes and ranking of China’s 107 universities of “211 universities.” The top university is Anhui University, whose competitive index is 25; while the Nanjing Agricultural University assumes the second place with a competitive index of 16.48. South China University of Technology licensed out 60 patents in 2011, which is the most fruitful university. Its competitiveness index is 10.56, ranking No. 6. Second to the South China University of Technology in the amount of recorded patent contracts in 2011 is Jiangnan University, who possesses 56 patent licensing records and whose competitive index is 9.40, ranking No. 8. Meanwhile, as China’s leading universities, the performances of Tsinghua University and Peking University are not very optimistic. Between 2005 and 2009, the Tsinghua University applies for 6,126 patents in total, ranks No. 2 among all universities. However, its recorded amount of patent licensing contracts in 2011 is only 23. As a result, the patent competitiveness index of Tsinghua University is 1.88, ranking No. 60. The Peking University shows an even bleaker scene. Its patent application amount between 2005 and 2009 totals 1,966, whereas the recorded amount of patent licensing contracts is merely 2, which means its patent competitiveness index is as low as 0.51, ranking No. 77 on the list.

As the natures and orientations of universities differ, the numbers of patent applications of the 107 universities of “211 universities” vary greatly from each other. Among these universities, Zhejiang University has the largest application amount between 2005 and 2009, totals 9,227, among which 7,103 are invention patents, 1,800 are utility model patents and 324 are design patents. On average, its annual patent applications amount to 1,845.4. Meanwhile, among the 79 universities which have one or more patent licensing contracts being recorded in 2011, Hunan Normal University files the fewest patent applications between 2005 and 2009. It only applies for 92 patents in total, and on average 18.4 patents annually, which is less than 1% of Zhejiang University’s number of applications. Taking into account that the larger the amount of patent application is, the more difficulty for a university to maintain the same rate of patent licensing, it may not be completely fair to compare universities without concerning their patent application amount. Therefore, List II, List III and are made according to universities’ different patent application amounts.

List II is the ranking of 43 universities of “211 Universities” whose patent applications are over 1,000 between 2005 and 2009. Since all universities in List II have large patent application amount, List II can reflect more objectively the patent competitiveness of the universities. According to List II, among all “211 universities” whose patent applications are more than 1,000 between 2005 and 2009, the most competitive university is Xi’an Jiaotong University, whose patent competitiveness index is 12.46, followed by Tianjin University and South China University of Technology with indexes of 11.09 and 10.56 respectively. Northwestern Polytechnical University, Beihang University and Peking University are the bottom three, their patent competitiveness indexes are 0.42, 0.48 and 0.51.

List III is the ranking of 35 universities of “211 universities” whose patent applications are above 300 and below 1000. On this list, the top university is Nanjing Agricultural University whose patent application amounts to 455 and competitive index is 16.48. The second comes the Hefei University of Technology which filed 558 patent applications with a competitive index of 12.54. Nanjing Normal University occupies the third place with 497 patent applications and a competitive index of 9.05. The last three are Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Ocean University of China and The Second Military Medical University. Their patent applications are 948, 778 and 575 respectively, while their competitiveness indexes are all 0.00.

List IV and List V provide the patent application status of universities between 2005 and 2009 and the number of patent licensing recordals of universities in 2011 respectively for readers’ reference.

Note:

(1) The research and report are not sponsored by any person or organization.

The statistics referred to in the report has been double checked, however, due to the limitation of human and material, resources as well as pressed time, there still may be defects and mistakes. If any mistake occurs while reading, please contact us for correction.

(2) The Report was chiefly composed by Yin Fenglin, the whole research team includes Qu Sanqiang (Chief Expert), Yin Fenglin, Tommy Zhang and Kevin Nie.

(3) Since the space is limited, all Lists in the report published on the magazine included only the top 10 universities.

(Translated by Monica Zhang)