Analysis of Plywood-Related Patents

Plywood has long been the leading product in my country's wood-based panel industry, primarily used in decoration, furniture manufacturing, packaging, and building formwork. Three- and five-layer urea-formaldehyde resin plywood is the primary product. Faced with declining supply of large-diameter plywood, Chinese plywood companies are utilizing surface thinning technology and developing a combination of plantation wood and imported tropical wood to produce mixed-species plywood. This has contributed to enriching plywood resources and increasing the market supply of tropical plywood. Chinese plywood production significantly improves wood utilization through the use of technologies such as rotary veneer edge banding, surface thinning, core splicing, spindleless rotary cutting, in-house glue production, and secondary assembly and gluing. Product standards primarily reference ISO standards with reference to Japanese standards. Product quality continues to improve, and production and export volumes are increasing year by year, securing a significant position in the international market.

This article analyzes and studies global plywood patents, aiming to grasp their technological development trends, major competitors, patent layout status, and important patent technical points from a global perspective, and provide some reference for my country's plywood-related research.

1. Data sources and analysis tools

The data retrieval and analysis tool used was the PatSnap patent analysis system, with the search date being February 5, 2018. The search query for this study was: title=(plywood OR veneer). The search results indicate 10,066 plywood-related patent applications worldwide. By legal status, 1,512 of these were authorized patents. By patent type, 3,865 were invention applications, 3,214 were authorized inventions, 2,037 were utility models, and 950 were designs. This article primarily analyzes 9,116 patents other than designs.

2. Development trend analysis

3. Regional analysis

4. Analysis of the main applicant

A statistical analysis of the main applicants for plywood patents shows that among the top eight applicants, two are from Japan, four are from China, and two are from Finland. The top eight applicants are: Meinan Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (Japan, 168 applications); Matsushita Electric Works Ltd. (Japan, 78 applications); Fujian Wuping Yunhe Wood Industry Co., Ltd. (China, 78 applications); Nanjing Forestry University (China, 47 applications); UPM-KYMMENE WOOD OY (Finland, 41 applications); RAUTE OYJ (Finland, 38 applications); China International Marine Containers (Group) Co., Ltd. (China, 37 applications); and the Research Institute of Wood Industry, Chinese Academy of Forestry (China, 31 applications).

Meinan Manufacturing Co., Ltd. and Panasonic Electric Works Co., Ltd. attach great importance to the patent layout of plywood technology and have applied for patents in major international plywood markets. The four Chinese plywood patent holders have only applied for patents in China.

5. High-value patent analysis

According to the patent value evaluation of the Zhihuiya database, the top 9 plywood patents in terms of patent value mainly involve composite components of plywood, improvement of dimensional stability, resistance to warping and delamination, plywood veneer connection methods, stacking devices, etc. (Table 1).

Table 1 Plywood patent value ranking

6. Text Cluster Analysis

A text cluster analysis of global plywood-related patents shows that the main technical topics covered by plywood patents include: decorative plywood, high-strength plywood, fixed connections, bamboo plywood, plywood hot presses, veneer plywood, flame-retardant plywood, plywood for container bottom panels, environmentally friendly plywood, and waterproof plywood. (Fan Shengming)

Source: State Forestry Administration Intellectual Property Research Center