China’s CATL has overtaken South Korea’s LG Energy Solution in a global battery patent ranking covering the past decade, with Chinese manufacturers occupying four of the top five positions.
Figures attributed to intellectual property consultancy PatSnap show CATL leading with 26,574 simple patent families, against LG Energy Solution’s 22,597.
The ranking, reported by Chinese media last week, covers October 2016 to September 2026.
A simple patent family generally groups patent documents sharing the same priority claims, reducing duplicate counting of related filings across different jurisdictions.
China’s EVE Energy ranks third with 12,141 patent families, followed by compatriot SVOLT Energy with 11,029. Japan’s Toyota completes the top five.
Other Chinese manufacturers in the top 10 include Gotion High-Tech and BYD, with 8,815 and 8,198 patent families respectively.
CATL’s broader battery patent portfolio reportedly contains 27,402 patent filings, including 16,722 over a recent three-year period. These figures use a different counting basis from the ten-year patent-family ranking.
The company’s chairman, Robin Zeng, said in May that CATL had invested more than 100 billion yuan (RM61 billion) in research and development over the preceding decade.
