"Looking at the data mining results of the 2,288 smart-manufacturing-related patents, MIC found that most of them were concentrated in the sectors of Electrical Engineering (66.2%) and Instruments (21.7%), with a consolidated share of 87.9%," explains David Chen, industry analyst with MIC.

"By field, 41.7% of the patents were in Computer technology, 11.1% in Control, and 9.3% in Measurement. Other fields with smaller share include Electrical machinery, apparatus, energy, Digital communication, Telecommunications, Basic communication processes, Audio-visual technology, and IT methods for management."

As far as sector is concerned, Computer technology, Control, and Measurement are clearly the focal areas of vendors' patent deployment. Together with Digital communication, Telecommunications, and IT methods for management, the results showed that companies are deploying smart manufacturing patents mainly for the purpose of building cloud automated control service platforms.

Since fewer companies have applied smart manufacturing patents in chemical, food, biotechnology, mechanical, transport, and machine tools industries, these sectors are relatively uncontested for perspective vendors.

For example, food makers can systematically build up their patent portfolios when inventing unique food production processes with smart manufacturing technologies.