Right now, if you go onto Espacenet and search "Quantum Computer", search by priority, and then see which nation has the most published applications for patents relating to quantum computer technology, you would see that roughly 95% of all recently published quantum computer patent applications are being filed in China. Does this mean that China is dwarfing all other nations such as the United States, India, Germany, and Russia in quantum computer development? Does this mean that scientists, engineers, and inventors in China really value patents more than those in other nations? Does this mean that researchers globally prefer to file Quantum Computing patent applications in China? The answer to all three questions is an equivocal no.
A lot of researchers in China stress patenting incremental, isolated improvements in the field of Quantum Computing, while researchers in other nations stress broad, holistic, sweeping patents in this field that describe lasting frameworks. For instance, consider this recently granted American patent, US10581616B1, "Managing nodes of a cryptographic hash tree in a hash-based digital signature scheme," which was granted to a Canadian company, Isara, on March 3, 2020. This patent describes an extremely novel way to use conventional electronic computers, i.e., NON-QUANTUM computers, to defend against cyber-attacks from quantum computers. This patent changes cryptography and cyber-security as we know it. Before any readers of this blog post say that this is not a quantum computer patent, know that this patent also profoundly changes quantum computing as well. Why? It reduces the short-term capabilities of quantum computers which reduces the utility of many quantum computing innovations. For instance, consider this patent application recently filed in China, CN110868297A, which roughly translates to "A Method of Improving RSA Decryption." The encryption techniques described in US10581616B1, if implemented, make the decryption methods found in CN110868297A largely obsolete. CN110868297A, in light of US10581616B1, would probably be found as lacking enough utility despite the fact that it appears to describe an incremental innovation in decryption. I think it's an example of different patent philosophies in different nations and different fields. What's so interesting to me is that other kinds of computer hardware patents in America have usually reflected the incremental philosophy that we're seeing in many quantum computing patents in China today.
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I just wanted to quickly share this patent:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4328470A/en |
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