中国在欧专利申请数大增

中文在上，对照英文在下

统计的结果简单明了：在全球专利大战中，欧洲发明家落在了后面。至于这个结果重不重要，则远没有那么容易说清楚。

The statistics are straightforward: European inventors are falling behind in the global patent rush. What is far less clear is whether this matters.

过去30年的多数时间里，专利申请数领先的国家无疑是日本和美国，欧洲则在第三位徘徊。但从2000年代初起，中国开始异军突起。自2011年起的每一年，中国国内提交的专利申请，在数量上都超过全球各地任何其他知识产权局收到的申请。

For most of the past 30 years, the leaders in patent filing were without doubt Japan and the US, with Europe bumping along in third place. But from the early 2000s, China began to emerge as a significant force, and each year since 2011 more patent applications have been filed in China than in any other intellectual property office around the globe.

起初，中国企业争相申请的是国内专利。不过，它们很快就开始把目光投向国际市场。欧洲专利局(European Patent Office)最新数据显示，去年欧盟(EU)收到的专利申请中，中国方面提交的在数量上居第四位，而不到十年前中国还仅处于第12位。

The initial rush was for domestically filed patents, but Chinese companies soon began looking for international markets, with the latest data from the European Patent Office (EPO) putting China fourth in the volume of patents filed in the EU last year, up from 12th less than a decade ago.

如今，欧洲收到的专利申请大部分来自欧洲以外，德国是唯一一个跻身前五的欧洲国家。总体上说，去年欧洲专利局收到的专利申请超过27.4万份，是有史以来专利申请最多的年份。

The majority of applications for patents in Europe now come from outside the continent, with Germany the only European country to make it into the top five. In total, more than 274,000 patents were applied for at the EPO last year, an all-time high.

对Withers & Rogers专利律师丹尼斯•凯塞里斯(Denis Keseris)来说，文章开头提到的那个结果是否重要，答案很简单：当然重要。他说：“部分企业还没有意识到知识产权的重要性。”他接着表示，为确保欧洲在创新中占据足够的分量，“我们应该提交比现在多得多的专利申请”。

For Denis Keseris, patent attorney at Withers & Rogers, the answer to the question of whether this matters is simple: yes. “Some companies are not getting to grips with the importance of intellectual property,” he says, adding that for Europe’s share of innovation “we should be filing a lot more patents”.

尽管英国向欧洲专利局提交的专利申请数量在以三年来最快的速度增长，但在人均专利申请数方面，英国仍落在欧洲多数大型经济体（意大利除外）的后面。

While the UK’s filings to the EPO grew at the fastest rate in three years, it still lags behind most large European economies (with the exception of Italy) in terms of filings per head of population.

代表英国特许专利律师协会(Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys)发表意见的专利律师马特•狄克逊(Matt Dixon)称：“英国企业必须清醒过来，认识到专利不仅仅是为头发蓬乱的发明家设置的，还是日常创新战略的关键环节。”如果自己的产品不享有法律保护，企业将处于任由他人抄袭的境地。

Matt Dixon, another patent attorney, speaking on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys in the UK, says: “British businesses need to wake up and realise that patents are not just for wild-haired inventors, but are a key part of everyday innovation strategy”. Without legal protection for their products, businesses are leaving themselves open to being copied.

中国在欧专利申请数的急剧增长，部分是出于赶超的需要。与其研发支出相比，中国的国际专利存量依然较少。中国企业要想争取欧洲的业务，就必须确保其技术背后的知识产权为自己所有、并且在欧盟具有合法性。

Part of the reason for the burgeoning number of Chinese patents in Europe is a need to catch up. China’s stock of international patents remains small compared with its research and development (R&D) spending. If Chinese companies are to compete for business in Europe, they will need to ensure that the IP underpinning their technology is owned by them and legal in the EU.

中国政府向中国企业在国内提交的专利申请提供补贴，2012年，它开始向中国企业在境外提交的专利申请提供额外的补贴。此举反映了中国政府对这个问题的重视程度。

As an indication of the importance that the Chinese government attaches to the issue, in 2012 it began offering subsidies for foreign filings in addition to those it offers for domestic filings.

有一种常见的说法是，来自中国的许多专利申请质量较低。相关数据在一定程度上支持了这种说法。虽然在提交给欧洲专利局的专利申请中，中国占了大约10%，但在获批的专利中，中国的占比却滑落至2%。

The often repeated charge that many of the patent applications from China are of low quality has some support in the data. While China accounts for about 10 per cent of patents filed to the EPO, when it comes to patents granted the proportion drops to 2 per cent.

一个更难回答的问题是，专利申请乃至专利获批情况是否能为我们了解国家间的相对创新态势提供什么有意义的线索。

The more knotty question is whether patent applications — or even those that are granted — tell us anything meaningful about the comparative state of innovation between countries.

英国知识产权局(Intellectual Property Office)对这个问题给出了否定的答案。该局不仅负责英国知识产权的总体政策，还负责英国专利、商标和设计权的批准。

The UK’s Intellectual Property Office, which is responsible for overall UK intellectual property policy as well as granting UK patents, trademarks and design rights, thinks not.

该局一名发言人表示：“单纯把专利数量作为创新水平的近似，是在以一种一维化和有很大欠缺的方式理解创新活动所特有的广度。”

“To approximate a level of innovation purely on patent numbers would be a one-dimensional, and woefully inadequate, way to understand the breadth of activity that characterises innovation,” according to a spokesman for the Office.

这名官员强调，专利本身不是保护创新的唯一途径。他补充说，专利“提供正式的保护，但它不涵盖未注册的发明，比如商业秘密，也不考虑不基于发明的创新”。

Stressing that patents themselves are not the only way to protect innovations, the official added that patents “provide formal protection but do not account for unregistered inventions, for example trade secrets, nor do they consider non- invention-based innovation”.

伦敦卡斯商学院(Cass Business School)讲师埃琳娜•诺韦利(Elena Novelli)的表态则更委婉一些，她说：“当然，专利申请数是一个衡量标准，但它不是终极衡量标准。”

Elena Novelli, lecturer at Cass Business School in London, is more measured, saying: “Certainly, the number of patents filed is a metric, but it is not the ultimate metric.”

至于到底有多少专利真的赚了钱，找不到什么严格的统计数据予以说明。但Bloomberg Business表示，2000年代中期有效的150万份美国专利中，只有大约3000份具备商业可行性。诺韦利博士强调，即使是那些赚钱的专利，各自的价值也可能大不相同，大量发明被证明并没有多少价值，只有少数发明具有很高价值。

There are no hard and fast statistics on how many patents actually make money, but Bloomberg Business says that of 1.5m US patents in effect in the mid-2000s, only about 3,000 were commercially viable. Dr Novelli stressed that even among those which make money, their value can be very skewed, with a high number of inventions turning out not to have much value and only a few being of high value.

人们展开了不少尝试，试图在更大的经济背景下考察创新，康奈尔大学(Cornell University)、欧洲工商管理学院(Insead)以及世界知识产权组织(WIPO)创立的“全球创新指数”(Global Innovation Index)就是其中之一。

One attempt of many to try to look at innovation in a wider economic context is the Global Innovation Index, created by Cornell University, Insead, the business school, and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

除了研发支出和许可费收入等变量，该指数还包含各国在YouTube网站的视频上传数以及在维基百科(Wikipedia)网站的月编辑次数等指标。若以该指数作为衡量指标搞个排行榜，欧洲则可大大松一口气：排名前五的国家是瑞士、英国、瑞典、芬兰和荷兰。中国则降至第29名。

Alongside variables such as spending on R&D and licence fee receipts, it also includes such things as video uploads on YouTube and Wikipedia monthly edits in each country. Europe can rest far easier on this metric: the top five places are taken by Switzerland, the UK, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands. China is down in 29th place.