Not in Quality

The number of Korea’s patents on smart automobile technology ranked second in the world.
The number of Korea’s patents on smart automobile technology ranked second in the world.

 

It has been found that the number of Korea’s patents on smart automobile technology ranked second in the world but in terms of qualitative levels, Korea was outmaneuvered by its competitors such as Japan and China.

The Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) said this fact on April 5 through a report titled “Analysis of Technology Capabilities and Development Direction of the Smart Car Industry” (from 1970 to 2015, based on the US Patent Office)."

According to the report, Korea had shown the fastest growth rate of an increase of 8.8 percentage points (based on the number of applications) among major countries since the 2000s. Korea overtook Germany in 2013 and Japan in 2014, and ranked second in terms of annual registrations for the third year.

Among Korean companies, Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Mobis ranked 8th and 24th respectively. They were followed by Samsung Electronics (25th) and LG Electronics (30th). Harman, an auto parts company, recently acquired by Samsung Electronics, ranked 35th. The Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) was the only Korean research institute with the 32nd ranking.

It was noteworthy that global IT giant Google ranked 10th and smart automobile patent applications by German automakers were not high contrary to expectations.

Korea strong in the sensor and human vehicle interface (HVI) sectors is relatively weak compared to major countries in terms of safety technology.

Analysis of the number of patents filed for the top eight countries (2011-2015) based on the number of patent applications cited in subsequent inventions found that Korea with 0.94 times came in seventh before the UK with 0.91 times.

The country with the highest average number of citations was for the United States with 3.91 times. The US was followed by Germany with 2.54 times, Canada with 2.07 times, both Japan and China with 1.81 times and Taiwan with 1.14 times.

However, in the field of human vehicle interfaces (HVIs), Korea finished 5th after the US, Japan, Germany, and the UK.

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