A Study On The Patent Management In The Innovative Activities Of Banking Industry In China

The operation status of the banking industry is related to the stabilization and development of economy of one country even the world. Today, with the advanced information technology, financial innovation has been the main impetus and means of operating activities and marketing competition of banking industry. In the November, 2001, China joined the WTO. In the December,2006, Chinese financial market has been overall and opening to the outside world, and at the same time, the Guidelines for the Financial Innovation of Commercial Banks were released by China Banking Regulatory Commission. In June,2008, the Outline of the National Intellectual Property Strategy was published by the State Council, P.R. China. Under the background above, by the methods of literature research, case study, comparative study and statistical analysis, the paper studies the innovative activities and the patent protection of banking industry in China, and finds the conclusions described as following:Firstly, the relationship between the innovative performance and the patent protection of Chinese banking industry is studied by the model of VAR, it is found that the patent protection of Chinese banking industry is influenced by the technnovative performance, the extent of opening-up, and itself; the technnovative performance is influenced by the extent of opening-up and itself; moreover, both the patent protection and the technnovative performance of banking industry were promoted by the opening-up of Chinese financial market. Furthermore, according to the result of the Granger Cause Test, what could be concluded is that the technnovative performance and the patent activities is not the Granger Cause each other, therefore, it is estimated that both the degree of innovation and the awareness of patent protection of Chinese banking industry were remained to be enhanced; the patent activities of Chinese banking industry is still at a beginning stage, it just has a advantage over quantity but not quality.Secondly, it is known that the business method is one of the main patent types in banking industry. A case study is made to the Bilski case of US Court and found that the certification to the patentability of business method is still instability. It is also found that the patentability of the patent applications related to the business method has not been denied definitely by the relevant regulations. The business method patents of banking industry in both US and Chinese were analyzed, it is turned out that both of them maintain the momentum of fairly rapid development.Thirdly, the Patent Management Map (PMM) and Patent Technology Map (PTM) of Chinese banking industry as well as its innovative activities are researched through the use of the bibliographic data of patent documentations. It is found that the innovative activities of Chinese banking industry have a higher level, the patent applications experienced a rapid growth; the main competitors of the innovative and patent activities of Chinese banking industry include the domestic banks, such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, China Merchants Bank, China Minsheng Bank, and so on, and the foreign banks, such as Laurel Bank of Japan, Bank of America, and Citibank, and so on.; the patent inventors who have competitive advantage in Chinese banking industry were picked out; the innovative activities of Chinese banking industry were concentrated on the technological fields of G06Q, G06F, G07F and H04L; there are 17 core patented technologies in Chinese banking industry, most of them were applied by the foreign banks and just only 2 of them were applied by the domestic bank; there are 20 major patented technologies in Chinese banking industry, all of them were applied by the foreign banks, which reflect the patent strategy of Patent First of foreign banks; besides, it is also known from the analysis of Patent Life Cycle that the patented technologies would be the stage of introduction and growth before 1997, and enter the stage of maturity step by step after 2004, the decrease and fluctuation of patent applications and applicants during the period from 1998-2004 is mainly affected by the patentability of business method.Meanwhile, the patent activities are studied by clustering algorithm basing on the patent statistics of each banking enterprise. It is proved that the awareness of patent protection of Chinese domestic banks has improved considerably; and what is shown from a comparative analyze to the domestic banks and foreign banks that before 2000, the patent quality of foreign banks is higher than domestic ones, and after that, the patent quality of domestic banks has been improved.The assessment indicators are selected from the patent map and the valuation model of innovative capabilities of Chinese banking industry is investigated. It is found that the innovative capabilities of foreign banks is higher than domestic banks, and the primary reason is that the competitive advantages of domestic banks depend on the indicators which were smaller weight to the innovative capabilities, instead, the competitive advantages of foreign banks depend on the indicators which were higher weight to the innovative capabilities.Lastly, the patent competitive capacity of Chinese banking industry is assessed by the use of Principal Component Analysis (PCA). It is found that among all the banks in China, the patent competitiveness of Industrial and Commercial Bank is strongest, followed by China Construction Bank and Laurel Bank of Japan. Besides, the TOP5 patent competitiveness also includes Bank of America and Citibank. The patent strategies of domestic banks are also discussed from the perspective of Grand Strategy Matrix.