From JLM:

A Tencent executive said that the company holds 400 patents, International Finance News reported July 28. Tencent research and development department’s Patent Team Director Wang Huotao told the paper that more than 50% of Tencent employees are engaged in research and development.

Anyone want to guess how many of these 400 patents are so-called junk patents?

Refresher course: China has three categories of patents, which are invention, utility model, and design.

Invention patents have quite a few requirements to meet before they are approved, one of which is that the innovation must be new. (What constitutes “new” is a bit complicated.) Applications are subject to scrutiny as to their “newness” before they can be approved.

Utility models and designs are also supposed to be “new,” but this issue is not subject to scrutiny prior to approval. You can actually get one of these types of patents approved even if the design or innovation is quite old.

Example: I could file 400 patent applications for different aspects of the design of my iPhone. As long as I fill out the application correctly, those applications could very well be approved. Apple will probably challenge those afterwards, but that’s another issue.

So I wonder what those 400 patents are all about? Note that most types of software in China are not patentable, and Tencent is an IT and game company.

Maybe someone could do a proprietor search of the patent database and let me know. Don’t make me do all the work around here; I already handle most of the writing.

Amazing that more than 50% of their staff is engaged in R&D! Either they have a gigantic profit margin, their business model resembles that of Bell Labs (sorry, I’m old — I meant “Lucent”), or they are playing fast and loose with the definition of “R&D.” If research means surfing the Intertubes for porn and chalking that up to a study of streaming video delivery platforms, then yeah, I guess over 50% of their staff is probably engaged in R&D.

I gotta get me a job at Tencent.