A Technological Landscape for Frugal Inventions in China

Today frugal innovations play an important role especially for Asian countries like China or India. These innovations are characterized by the concentration on a product’s core functions, thereby lowering production costs. Frugal innovations are preceded by frugal inventions, which can be identified in patents. Particularly in the wake of China’s major initiative to stimulate patenting, there is a chance to obtain a significant number of hits in the search for such patents. In order to map the technological landscape of frugal inventions in China, we make use of an already tested frugal thesaurus for the search. Our results show that frugal inventions focus on the improvement of everyday living conditions, being concentrated in areas such as heating or agriculture. Furthermore, patent applicants are primarily individuals residing in China and searching protection of their inventions in that country. From this, two consequences arise for patenting companies from outside China: First, they need to perform a thorough patent search before entering the Chinese market. Second, it is possible for them to use Chinese inventions abroad without paying license fees.