China Applies for the Most Patents by Far

Chinese companies, above all Alibaba, rely on the blockchain technology - not only for crypto currencies.

Alibaba alone accounts for 10 percent of the worldwide patents filed in the field of blockchain technology. According to the Nikkei Asian Review, this shows that China wants to dominate this new technology. Together with the patent applications of Tencent and Baidu, Chinese companies accounted for 56 percent of the total of 406 patent applications submitted according to Thomson Reuters in 2017.  With a share of 22 percent, the USA ranks second by a large margin.

Last week, Ant Financial, which belongs to Alibaba, entered into a partnership with the city government of Wuchang in Heilongjiang province in order to be able to prove the origin of rice in a forgery-proof manner. Alibaba rice packs sold on the Tmall platform are provided with a QR code. When buyers scan the QR code with an Alibaba app, they can track the product through the supply chain and receive information about where the rice was harvested and which seeds were used.

The system is also intended to reduce delivery times. The Wuchang region is known for its high quality rice. That is why counterfeiters set to work and offered rice from Wuchang for sale that did not even come from the region. This has damaged the farmers in the region and the credibility of the local government has also suffered. The blockchain technology is supposed to prevent this in the future. This is just one example of how the blockchain can be used profitably outside the crypto currencies. Another example is the medical sector. Alibaba has started a project in Changzhou to check to what extent authorized doctors can directly access patients' health data via blockchain-based systems. In April, Baidu introduced Totem, a blockchain-based service for storing photos.

Outside China and the USA, there are only two other countries, Japan and Great Britain, in each of which there are several companies that hold patents in the field of blockchain technology.