In order to boost employee morale, Samsung Electronics significantly increased employee patent bonuses, tripling the previous amount.

Industry sources pointed out that Samsung Electronics recently doubled the bonus for employees’ patent applications as part of its “invention incentives.” Patent bonuses are divided into A1, A2, B and other levels according to levels. The A1 level applies to patent applications in all major overseas countries, and the bonus increases from 1 million won to 1.5 million won; the A2 level applies to US or Chinese patents, and the bonus increases from 500,000 won to 1 million won. This bonus increase will apply until September 2027 for a period of two years.

Korean media The Elec believes that before 2017, Samsung Electronics only paid 500,000 won for even the highest-level patents, and the A1-level bonus was only raised to 1 million won in 2017. After almost no major adjustments in the past decade, the company has now not only significantly increased the A1 bonus, but also doubled the A2 bonus, hoping to encourage employees to develop new technologies in key business areas such as advanced memory, wafer foundry, television, and smartphone application processors (AP).

It is reported that employees will also receive monthly bonuses for a fixed period after patent application, and the amount is calculated based on the market position and sales volume of the product to which the patent is applied. Company insiders revealed that employees apply for a large number of patents every year, sometimes even more than 10, so this adjustment is a great incentive for employees.

In recent years, Samsung's leading position has been challenged. For example, the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) part was surrendered to SK Hynix, which had long been ranked second. In the wafer foundry business, it continues to widen the gap with TSMC, but it still retains its advantage in the smartphone business. However, some analysts pointed out that this mainly relied on Qualcomm’s expensive AP, which indirectly replaced Samsung’s previous AP position.

However, Samsung’s patent registrations are on an upward trend. For example, 7,714 patents were registered in 2020, and then continued to exceed 10,000, and last year it exceeded 20,000. In the first half of the year alone, Samsung registered a total of 9,599 patents in South Korea and the United States.

Industry insiders revealed that in the field of system semiconductors, not only the United States, but also China, under pressure from the United States, is rapidly widening the gap with Samsung; and in the field of memory, the technology gap is about five years at most.

According to statistics from global intellectual property company MatthiasSquare, the total number of global semiconductor patents from April 2023 to March 2024 reached 80,892, an annual increase of 22%. Among them, China submitted 46,591 patents, an increase of 44%, accounting for more than half, reaching 57.5%.

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