Studies of world carbon fiber industry from a perspective of patent analysis

Patents are the manifestation of the industry R&D endeavor;therefore, World carbon fiber in-dustry from the perspective of patent analysis is studied .Findings from the analysis show a continual increase of carbon fibers patents since 1969 , and the growth rate began even faster after the year of 2005.Five countries (Japan, China, US, Germany and Korea) took dominant positions in global carbon fibers R&D , and the sum of patents applied in these five countries accounted for 80%of the total patents in the world .Corporations do play an active role in global carbon fibers R&D , and over 60%of patents were applied by corporations .Among them , the top 3 corporations were all from Ja-pan, which had much more patents than the other patent assignees .Furthermore, most corporations were not active in cooperation with others , except Toyota Motor Corp .Global carbon fibers R&D fo-cused on sheet manufacture cloth , core wire layer , heat connect provide and filter activated draw . And there is big difference between Japan and China in the R&D focus .China ’ s corporations have exhibited rapid growth in the number of patent applications in recent years , but there is still a large gap between China and foreign countries in view of global patent layout and influence .By providing the insight into the evolution of global carbon fibers industrial and technological development through the perspective of patent analysis , this study hopes to provide an objective statistic reference for fu-ture policy directions and academic researches .