Asian universities doing well in int’l rankings, set examples for good IP strategy, IP lawyer says
10 March 2022
Universities from Asia are flexing their muscle, with more educational institutions from the region making their presence felt in various global university rankings.
One of these is Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. Although THE’s table continues to be dominated by universities from the United Kingdom and the United States, those from Asia are climbing higher in the rankings and getting a bigger slice of the pie too.
For Yen Vu, executive and country manager of Rouse Legal Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh, these developments set an example for other jurisdictions in Asia, as far as intellectual property is concerned.
In THE’s 2021 university rankings, Tsinghua University in Beijing made it to the top 20 for the first time, making it the highest-ranked educational institution from Asia.
In THE’s 2022 list which covers 1,662 educational institutions in 99 countries and territories, Peking University joins Tsinghua in the magic circle of 20 top universities in the world. The two tied for 16th place.
In the top 50 are the National University of Singapore which occupies 21st spot, four notches up from 25th spot in 2021; University of Hong Kong, 30th; University of Tokyo, 35th; Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, 46th; and Chinese University of Hong Kong, 49th – for a total of seven. In 2021, six Asian universities were in the top 50.
Ten mainland Chinese universities made it to the top 200 in the current rankings – a far cry from the mere two that figured in THE’s 2016 table.
Hong Kong also increased its share in the top 200, from three in 2016 to five in 2022 as did South Korea. From four in 2016, the country now has six universities in the 200 best list.
THE’s rankings were based on 13 performance indicators across these components: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. Over 108 million citations from more than 14.4 million research publications were analyzed. Surveys which attracted responses from nearly 22,000 scholars around the world were also included.
“The rise in the World University Rankings of leading Asian countries are also good examples of successful IP strategy for developing Asian countries to follow,” said Vu.
“In recent years, the Vietnamese government’s efforts in encouraging R&D and innovation have shown some results. Latest statistics show that the number of patent applications filed by Vietnam’s universities and research institutes have increased in recent years. Last year, Naver Corporation invested in two international research laboratories at two universities in Vietnam in the belief that this will open the door for Vietnam to become one of the leading AI centers in the world,” she said.
Founded in 1999, Naver Corporation is South Korea’s biggest Internet companies. Named as 9th most innovative company by Forbes and 6th Future 50 Company by Fortune magazine in 2018, Naver is the provider of South Korea’s top search portal “NAVER.” Meanwhile, its subsidiaries and affiliates are the providers of a digital comics platform, group social media platform, camera app, metaverse platform, among others.
“To boost universities’ research income, Vietnam has also been disseminating knowledge on IP commercialization through workshops at many universities,” Vu added.
THE also releases the Young University Rankings, covering universities around the world which are less than 50 years old. The rankings are based on the same 13 performance indicators.
In its 2022 table, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University is in second spot. Three universities from Hong Kong made it to the magic circle of 10. Meanwhile, India is one of two nations with 40 universities each in the list, the highest of any country. India had 26 institutions in the table in the 2020 rankings.
The QS University Rankings: Top 50 Under 50 also had Nanyang Technological University at the top in its 2021 edition.
Another is Reuters Top 75 which ranks the most innovative universities in Asia Pacific. Seoul National University reigned on top in its 2019 list. Universities from China, South Korea, Japan and Singapore also made it to the top 20. The criteria includes volume of patent filings and research paper citations.
Espie Angelica A. de Leon
