Taiwan is ranked fifth in the world for the number of patents. That’s the word from the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs). Taiwan is only ranked behind the United States, Japan, Korea, and Germany.
As in the number of highly influential patents, Taiwan is ranked 12th in the world. A director of NARLabs, Joung Yuh-Jzer said that figure has gone down only because Taiwan puts emphasis on the quality of the patents.
“The figure has gone down 3% worldwide, whereas Taiwan dropped 0.6%," said Joung.
"The reason for the drop is because Taiwan has been focusing on applying for the more valuable patents in the last few years. That’s because applying for patents is very costly. One patent could cost up to US$100,000 to US$200,000. So we are more strict in the selection process. Even though we are applying for fewer numbers of patents, we emphasize the quality of the patents.”
In the area of academic research, Taiwan is ranked 16th in the world for the number of theses submitted. That’s an average of close to 1,200 thesis papers submitted for every one million people. Taiwan submits more papers than Korea, Japan, and China.