In November 2023, the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center and the Electronic Intellectual Property Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the “China AI Large Model Innovation and Patent Technology Analysis Report” (hereinafter referred to as the “Report”), which shows the patent technology layout and development trend of China’s large models since 2017, reveals the evolution process and industrial panorama of large model technology from the patent perspective, and puts forward prospects for the future patent layout, technology innovation and industrial development of large models.

The “Report” shows that in the field of large models, domestic leading enterprises such as Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba have demonstrated strong technology innovation capabilities and produced a large number of patent achievements. Among them, Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba and other patent applications have exceeded 400, and Baidu, Tencent and other patent authorizations have exceeded 100. The top ten corporate entities ranked by patent applications have applied for more than 3,800 patents and authorized more than 960 patents, accounting for 9.6% and 8.7% of the total number of patents of China’s large model innovation entities, respectively. Large model leading enterprises represented by Baidu, through continuous technology innovation and patent accumulation, are accelerating the construction and development of China’s large model ecology.

The “Report” conducted a technical effect matrix analysis of the patents of the main innovation entities, and the analysis showed that the patent layout mainly focused on the dimensions of large model accuracy improvement, precision improvement, speed and efficiency acceleration, cost optimization and control, etc., which became the focus of patent layout of companies such as Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba. Baidu has obvious advantages in the patent layout of the above dimensions, Tencent is more active in the layout of large model accuracy improvement and efficiency acceleration, and Alibaba has also carried out patent layout in the corresponding dimensions. It is worth mentioning that Baidu has two patents involving information generation and semantic representation models, which have been cited 43 and 31 times respectively, highlighting the foresight and importance of large model related patents in the development of artificial intelligence technology.

The “Report” shows that multimodal fusion and cross-domain application are the development trends of large model patent technology, and software industry, manufacturing industry and service industry are the industries with more patent layout of China’s large model innovation entities, with patent layout numbers of 36,000, 34,000 and 28,000 respectively. From the perspective of the application scenario distribution of the main innovation entities, enterprises such as Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba have deepened the industrialization development of patents, and have more patent layout in many industries such as software industry and manufacturing industry. According to reports, Baidu’s intelligent cloud open-thing industrial internet platform is the first “double-cross” platform that integrates large model technology and industry, accelerating the landing of industrial internet, and has accumulated more than 40,000 industrial models and intelligent applications.

The “Report” believes that large models, as the key technology of the new generation of artificial intelligence, will have more profound popularity and influence in the field of intelligent applications as the data volume and computing power continue to increase. China has rich patent accumulation, accelerated technology innovation iteration, and accelerated application scenario landing of large models, with a good industrial foundation and development environment.

At present, China is facing a critical period for the development of large models, and should deeply understand the importance of large models for industrial development and fully grasp the time window. Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate the creation, protection and industrialization process of large model patents, to empower the digital transformation and intelligent upgrading of traditional industries, and to help the high-quality development of economy and society.