Alibaba was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and is doing business as a Technology company. The Company offers wide range products of E-commerce, Cloud computing, Artificial intelligence, Entertainment, Mobile commerce, Retail Mobile media, Films, TV shows. As of November 2021, Alibaba has a market cap of $459.95 Billion.
Alibaba has a total of 51752 patents globally, out of which 17422 have been granted. Of these 51752 patents, more than 82% patents are active. China is where Alibaba has filed the maximum number of patents, followed by Hong Kong and USA and it also seems reasonable as the biggest market for Alibaba is China. China seems to be the main focused R&D center and is also the origin country of Alibaba.
Do read about some of the most popular patents of Alibaba which have been covered by us in this article and also you can find Alibaba’s patents information, the worldwide patent filing activity and its patent filing trend over the years, and many other stats over Alibaba’s patent portfolio.
How many patents does Alibaba have?
Alibaba has a total of 51752 patents globally. These patents belong to 32005 unique patent families. Out of 51752 patents, 28717 patents are active.
How many Alibaba patents are Alive/Dead?
Worldwide Patents
Patent Families
How Many Patents did Alibaba File Every Year?
Are you wondering why there is a drop in patent filing for the last two years? It is because a patent application can take up to 18 months to get published. Certainly, it doesn’t suggest a decrease in the patent filing.
| Year of Patents Filing or Grant | Alibaba Applications Filed | Alibaba Patents Granted |
| 2011 | 863 | 154 |
| 2012 | 1203 | 145 |
| 2013 | 1475 | 227 |
| 2014 | 2237 | 309 |
| 2015 | 4718 | 497 |
| 2016 | 5933 | 835 |
| 2017 | 6998 | 990 |
| 2018 | 10154 | 1233 |
| 2019 | 10775 | 2550 |
| 2020 | 4699 | 5600 |
| 2021 | 929 | 4746 |
How Many Patents did Alibaba File in Different Countries?
Countries in which Alibaba Filed Patents
| Country | Patents |
| China | 23630 |
| Hong Kong (S.A.R.) | 5804 |
| United States Of America | 4553 |
| Taiwan | 3195 |
| Europe | 1770 |
| Japan | 1546 |
| Singapore | 1360 |
| India | 912 |
| Korea (South) | 838 |
| Malaysia | 439 |
| Philippines | 424 |
| Australia | 335 |
| Thailand | 319 |
| Indonesia | 258 |
| Viet Nam | 226 |
| Canada | 213 |
| Russian Federation | 139 |
| Brazil | 122 |
| Spain | 121 |
| Mexico | 107 |
| South Africa | 83 |
| Turkey | 28 |
| Poland | 21 |
| Germany | 8 |
| African Intellectual Property Organization | 5 |
| United Kingdom | 3 |
| Norway | 3 |
| Israel | 3 |
| Denmark | 2 |
| Austria | 2 |
| Czech Republic | 1 |
| Portugal | 1 |
| Hungary | 1 |
| Lithuania | 1 |
Where are Research Centers of Alibaba Patents Located?
10 Best Alibaba Patents
US6282653B1 is the most popular patent in the Alibaba portfolio. It has received 299 citations so far from companies like DivX Inc, Oath Inc and Sonics Inc.
Below is the list of 10 most cited patents of Alibaba:
| Publication Number | Citation Count |
| US6282653B1 | 299 |
| US6477543B1 | 270 |
| US8612420B2 | 196 |
| US20100138347A1 | 192 |
| US6243722B1 | 165 |
| USD762655S1 | 157 |
| US7913303B1 | 143 |
| CN107294709A | 134 |
| US20120131438A1 | 129 |
| US6393420B1 | 126 |
Which Companies are using Alibaba Patents to Advance their Research?
If patents or patents from a particular technology area of a company receive a lot of citations, it implies that the technology is being followed and incrementally innovated by the citing companies. It also indicates that citing companies are working on similar and closely related technologies.
The top citing companies in the Alibaba patent portfolio are IBM, Microsoft and Samsung.
List of the top forward citing Companies
| Company | Number of Patents |
| IBM | 98 |
| Microsoft | 51 |
| Samsung | 46 |
| Tencent | 46 |
| 33 | |
| Advanced New Technologies Co Ltd | 25 |
| Amazon | 23 |
| 20 | |
| eBay | 19 |
| Apple | 19 |
Count of 102 and 103 Type Rejections based on Alibaba Patents
Top Alibaba Patents used in Rejecting Most Patent Applications
| Patent Number | Count of Rejected Applications |
| US8892461B2 | 26 |
| US8843484B2 | 12 |
| US8725569B2 | 11 |
| US9542566B2 | 9 |
| US8972773B2 | 9 |
| US8695093B2 | 9 |
| US8738630B2 | 9 |
| US8958822B2 | 8 |
| US8874695B2 | 8 |
| US9818142B2 | 8 |
| US6996556B2 | 8 |
| US6996748B2 | 8 |
| US9037485B2 | 8 |
| US6477543B1 | 7 |
| US8948781B2 | 7 |
What Percentage of Alibaba US Patent Applications were Granted?
Alibaba (Excluding its subsidiaries) has filed 4326 patent applications at USPTO so far (Excluding Design and PCT applications). Out of these 2664 have been granted leading to a grant rate of 82.22%.
Below are the key stats of Alibaba’s patent prosecution at the USPTO.
Which Law Firms Filed Most US Patents for Alibaba?
| Law Firm | Total Applications | Success Rate |
| Fish & Richardson | 1139 | 97.97% |
| Lee & Hayes | 871 | 67.13% |
| Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton | 538 | 94.09% |
| Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner | 504 | 84.73% |
| Van Pelt Yi & James | 455 | 75.57% |
| Jefferson Ip Law | 177 | 67.23% |
| Greenberg Traurig | 146 | 65.69% |
| Murabito Hao & Barnes | 142 | 63.22% |
| Park Vaughan Fleming & Dowler | 124 | 86.14% |
| Alston & Bird | 84 | 85.53% |
Alibaba’s unique innovation was that it was creating an ecosystem: a community of creatures (various types of enterprises and consumers) interacting with each other and the environment (the online platform and the larger offline physical elements). Its strategic aim was to ensure that the platform provided all of the resources, or access to resources, that an online business would require to succeed, and so aided the ecosystem’s expansion.
At first, Alibaba’s ecosystem was simple: it connected buyers and sellers of goods. More company functions, including existing ones like advertising, marketing, logistics, and finance, as well as emergent ones like affiliate marketing, product recommenders, and social media influencers, went online as technology evolved. As Alibaba’s ecosystem grew to accommodate these innovations, it aided in the creation of new types of online enterprises, fundamentally transforming China’s retail sector in the process.
Alibaba is no longer merely an e-commerce corporation. It’s what you get when you combine all aspects of retailing and organize them online into a vast, data-driven network of sellers, marketers, service providers, transportation firms, and manufacturers. In other words, Alibaba does in the United States everything Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Google, FedEx, wholesalers, and a significant part of manufacturers do, with a generous helping of financial services thrown in for good measure.
What are Alibaba‘s key innovation segments?
What Technologies are covered by Alibaba Patents?
The chart below distributes patents filed by Alibaba in different countries on the basis of the technology protected in patents. It also represents the markets where Alibaba thinks it’s important to protect particular technology inventions.
R&D Focus: How Alibaba’s research focus changed over the years?
Interested in knowing about the areas of innovation that are being protected by Alibaba?