全球量子技术专利格局概览

January 2024 Table of Contents Introduction....................................................................................3Global Patent Family Landscape of Quantum Technologies.....................8Landscape of ‘International’ Patent Families.......................................18European Situation for Patent Families in Quantum Technologies..........23Conclusion....................................................................................27References....................................................................................29Bibliography..................................................................................29Glossary ofAbbreviations................................................................30Definitions....................................................................................30Appendix A: Creating the Corpora of Patents and Patent Applications....32 Introduction 1.1Goal Thiswhite paper presents an overview of the patent landscape in quantumtechnologies and provides some more details onquantum computing,quantumcommunicationandquantum sensing. It will also review theEuropean position inrelation to the USA and China, and identifythe main actors and trends in quantumtechnologies. To this end, we will consider the following agenda in this white paper: •First, we establish apatent family landscapein quantum technologies (i.e.,patentable invention landscape), based on all alive patent families;•Second, we focus on“international patent families”; these are patent familieswith at least one country of extension outside the country of origin, aspatentfamilies of value are usually extended outside the country of origin;•Third, we zoom in onEuropean companiesand review the situation regardingpatents and patent applications filed at theEuropean Patent Office. Important notes: Note 1:This study is based on alive patents and patent applications that were publishedbefore 30June2023. The reader should take into account that there isan 18-monthdelay between the date of first filing and the date of first publication. In other words,this study includes only patent families with a first filingbefore 1January2022. Note2:The quantum technologies domain in particular is currently highlydynamic in terms of invention filingsand accordingly the number of patent familiesmaybe evolving quite significantly.IQM Finland,for example,released 10 firstpublications between July and November 2023, significantly increasing the size of itsportfolio. Note 3:For this study, Europe refers to “Geographical Europe”: the 27 EU countries plusthe United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. 1.2What is the Quantum Revolution? Here is how the European Commission describes the quantum revolution (Ref [1]): •In the first quantum revolutionduring the early twentieth century, scientistslearned to understand and apply the properties of quantum mechanics–theinteractions of molecules, atoms, and even smaller particles like photons andelectrons.This ultimately allowed them to create transistors,lasers andmicroprocessors:foundationaltechnologiesforcomputers,telecommunications,satellite navigation,smartphones,modern medicaldiagnostics, and much more.•Now,the second quantum revolutionis underway. Researchers can detectandmanipulate individual particles and their physical interlinkages andinteractions, and build new technologies and systems that make use of theproperties of the underlying quantum mechanics. These developments haveled to major technical advances in many different areas, includingquantumcomputing, sensors, simulations, cryptography and telecommunications.A whole generation of new quantum technologies with the potential for far-reaching economic and societal impact is starting to emerge. Some are alreadyin development, while many others will be developed in the coming decades. For more information, see the full articleatQuantum | Shaping Europe’s digital future(europa.eu). In this study, we will use the following segmentation: •Quantum computing•Quantum communication(quantum key distribution(QKD)&quantuminternet)•Quantum sensing 1.3 Overview of Quantum Computing Please note thatthis paragraph has been extracted from the “QuIC–StrategicIndustry Roadmap” (Ref [2]). Quantum computing is a computational paradigm that exploits quantum effectssuch assuperposition, interference, and entanglement to solve problems byapplying a quantum algorithm.There are different variants of this paradigm. Themost common isdigital gate-based quantum computing, in which quantumalgorithms are represented as quantum circuits–i.e., a sequence of quantumgates applied to qubits. Digital quantum computing is universal; that is, in principle a digital quantum computer can solve any quantum algorithm, although thecurrently available devices are still quite limited. An alternative paradigm isadiabatic quantum computing, in which the solution of the problem is encodedas the ground state of the system’s Hamiltonian