China Accounts for 84% of Global Blockchain Patents
The blockchain space is witnessing a serious volume of patent applications, with a recent press conference revealing who is the leader holding the most patents.
In a press conference on Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said that the country accounts for over 84% of the world’s blockchain patent applications, despite the ban on cryptocurrencies.
Wang Jianwei, deputy director of the ministry’s information technology development department, added that blockchain is already being rapidly integrated into economic and government affairs.
China has banned cryptocurrencies, but their technological source, blockchain, is used by companies and the government. The country’s Academy of Information and Communication Technology, an academic institution backed by MIIT, said in July that there were more than 1,300 blockchain companies in China as of March this year.
In 2021, the country ranks first in the world in the number of blockchain patent applications filed. The number is about 33,000, taking up 63.2% of global applications, followed by the U.S. and South Korea, according to a February report by patent think tank PatSnap.
However, PatSnap noted that the quality of blockchain patents in China may be lacking, as the report stated that 78.4% of Chinese blockchain-related patents were cited only one to five times, and 10.5% of the country’s patents were cited 11 or more times.
Meanwhile, in the US, 65.7% of patents are in the one to five times range, and 21.5% of patents are cited more than 11 times. Also, only 0.1% of Chinese blockchain patents are cited more than 100 times, compared to 1.3% in the US.
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John Eastwood, a Taipei-based patent attorney and senior partner at Eiger Law said:
“The cost of filing a patent in China is close to zero, but the benefits of owning a patent or even just filing patent documents are relatively large as they can help improve a company’s profile.”
Many of the applications filed do not appear to be advanced or innovative, but companies still want to file them to create an innovative appearance.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
