The European Patent Office and International Energy Agency issued a report on September 22, 2020, to outline the world’s pursuit of better battery technology. It notes that for the sake of environmentally sustainable energy use and mobility, battery technology is important, and Asian mega companies are leading the way.[1]
The EPO report looked at international patent families (IPFs) to see how serious applicants were in getting internationally protected patents, and tallied these for the years 2000-2018. It shows that Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea, ROK) had nine of the top ten corporations with patent applications related to battery technology in these years. The top applicant was Korean Samsung, followed in order by Panasonic (Japan), LG (ROK), Toyota (Japan), and Bosch (Germany)—and then six other Japanese corporations.[1; 2 p. 52] In 2018, Japan had over 2,300 IPFs filed for battery technology, and South Korea 1,230. Europe, USA, and People’s Republic of China, of course, also had many filings but not as many.[1; 2 p. 10]
The report also noted that while in Japan and the ROK, respectively, such battery technology patent applications were vastly concentrated in large corporations’ research—under 7% of Japan’s and under 14% of Korea’s IPFs came from small/medium enterprises (SMEs) or universities, whereas in the USA and Europe many more SMEs and universities’ patent applications were filed.[1; 2 p. 65]
Lithium ion batteries account for much of the growth, whereas “other storage technologies, such as supercapacitors and redox flow batteries, are also rapidly emerging with the potential to address some of the weaknesses of Li-ion batteries.”[1; also 2 p. 5]
A note on Japan’s work in the automobile industry: the report comments that Japanese corporations have failed to convert their technologies into major growth in electronic car production, although in China many electronic cars are being produced and even sold to Tesla. [2 p. 10] This may relate to how Toyota has been promoting and sharing hybrid energy fueled cars: the jump to hybrid is easier than that to complete EV cars. We hope, with the report, that each participant in the race for better batteries enables cleaner and better energy for the future.
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Taro Yaguchi
Sources
[1] European Patent Office. EPO-IEA study: rapid rise in battery innovation playing key role in clean energy transition.” https://www.epo.org/news-events/news/2020/20200922.html September 22, 2020. Accessed September 29, 2020.
[2] European Patent Office and OECD/International Energy Agency. Innovation in batteries and electricity storage: A global analysis based on patent data.
http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/969395F58EB07213C12585E7002C7046/$FILE/battery_study_en.pdf September 2020. Accessed September 29, 2020.
Header image: by FranckinJapan from Pixabay
