AI Patents in the United States and China: Measurement, Organization, and Knowledge Flows
Hanming Fang, Xian Gu, Hanyin Yan, Wu Zhu
TLDR
This paper measures AI patents in the US and China, finding rapid growth, organizational differences, and continued knowledge interdependence.
Key contributions
- Developed a high-precision classifier for AI patents, outperforming USPTO's method with 97% precision and 94% F1 score.
- Found rapid growth and convergence in AI patenting intensity and subfield composition in both the US and China.
- Revealed distinct organizational structures: US AI patents are concentrated, while Chinese AI patents are more diffuse and diverse.
- Showed a market-value premium for AI patents and continued cross-border knowledge flow, with China relying more on US tech.
Why it matters
This research provides a robust method for measuring AI patents, offering critical insights into the global AI innovation landscape. It highlights key differences in how AI innovation is organized in the US and China, despite overall growth and convergence. This understanding is crucial for policymakers and industry leaders.
Original Abstract
We develop a high-precision classifier to measure artificial intelligence (AI) patents by fine-tuning PatentSBERTa on manually labeled data from the USPTO's AI Patent Dataset. Our classifier substantially improves the existing USPTO approach, achieving 97.0% precision, 91.3% recall, and a 94.0% F1 score, and it generalizes well to Chinese patents based on citation and lexical validation. Applying it to granted U.S. patents (1976-2023) and Chinese patents (2010-2023), we document rapid growth in AI patenting in both countries and broad convergence in AI patenting intensity and subfield composition, even as China surpasses the United States in recent annual patent counts. The organization of AI innovation nevertheless differs sharply: U.S. AI patenting is concentrated among large private incumbents and established hubs, whereas Chinese AI patenting is more geographically diffuse and institutionally diverse, with larger roles for universities and state-owned enterprises. For listed firms, AI patents command a robust market-value premium in both countries. Cross-border citations show continued technological interdependence rather than decoupling, with Chinese AI inventors relying more heavily on U.S. frontier knowledge than vice versa.
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