The Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio spans 12,269 patent families, offering a window into how this Chinese consumer electronics major protects its engineering output. Of this total, 44.4% remains active, a figure covering both granted and pending filings. The portfolio includes 4,422 granted patents and 1,024 pending applications, translating into a grant rate of 36.0%. The remaining families fall into lapsed, revoked, or expired status, together accounting for 6,823 filings. These are prosecution and maintenance metrics, not a verdict on the quality or enforceability of any single patent.
Filing activity peaked in 2018, when the company recorded 1,110 new families, marking the high point of a sustained growth phase. China dominates the filing geography, holding a 100.0% share of jurisdictions_pct across a spread of 7 jurisdictions tracked in this analysis. On the technology side, image and video processing under H04N leads the portfolio with 2,698 families, reflecting Changhong’s deep roots in television and display engineering.
This report draws on structured patent filing data to help business leaders, licensing teams, and competitive intelligence functions understand where Changhong has concentrated its innovation spend. Filing volume alone does not prove market success or technical superiority over rivals. Readers evaluating specific families for licensing, litigation, or investment due diligence should verify details directly against primary patent office records before relying on them externally.
About Sichuan Changhong
Company Profile: Sichuan Changhong Electric Co., Ltd., known domestically as Changhong and internationally as CHiQ, is a Chinese consumer electronics company based in Mianyang, Sichuan, founded in October 1958. The company designs and manufactures televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, compressors and related appliances, alongside electronic components and ICT services. In 2004, 90 percent of the television sets exported from China to the United States were made by Changhong, and it was the second-largest manufacturer of televisions in China as of 2010.
In 2024, Changhong ranked 283rd on World Brand Lab’s “World’s 500 Most Influential Brand’s” list. It operates internationally under the CHiQ brand. Its revenue was reported at over 108.2 billion CNY as of September 2025, with operating income exceeding 1.8 billion CNY, and it employed 45,376 people in 2024. The company remains a major industrial employer in Mianyang and a key player in China’s consumer electronics sector.
How Healthy is Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio?
Patent portfolio health depends on how filings move through legal status categories over time. Changhong’s legal status split shows 36.0% granted, 8.3% pending, 22.0% lapsed, 29.4% revoked, and 4.2% expired. The composition chart in this section makes clear that revoked and lapsed filings together outweigh the granted share. This pattern is common in large Chinese utility model portfolios, where protection terms are shorter and renewal discipline varies by business unit.
Looking at patent type, conventional patents make up 64.0% of filings while utility models account for 36.0%, with design filings forming a negligible share at 0.0%. This mix suggests Changhong pursues both substantive invention protection and faster, lower-threshold utility model routes common in Chinese manufacturing sectors. The active rate of 44.4% indicates that a meaningful portion of the portfolio still carries enforceable rights or is awaiting examination outcomes.
For a company of Changhong’s scale and manufacturing history, this legal status profile points to a portfolio that has been pruned over decades rather than one expanding without discipline. Businesses assessing licensing opportunities should focus on the granted and pending segments, since these represent the only legally meaningful protection currently in force.
How Has the Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio Evolved Over Time?
Patent filing trends for Changhong show a clear arc. Annual filings stayed under 600 through 2013, then climbed sharply from 887 in 2015 to a peak of 1,110 in 2018. The filing-trend chart in this section captures this rise and the subsequent pull-back after 2020, when filings dropped to 476 in 2021. This decline coincides with a period when many large Chinese electronics filers scaled back utility model volume amid policy changes affecting low-quality filings.
Filings held in a narrower band afterward, with 614 in 2023, 581 in 2024, and 569 in 2025. The sharp apparent fall to 82 in 2026, a -85.6% change from the prior year, reflects publication lag rather than a genuine collapse in research output. Patent applications typically take many months to appear in public databases, so the most recent one to two years will always understate real filing activity.
Read together, the data suggests Changhong built aggressively through the mid-2010s, aligned with its television and smart appliance expansion, then settled into a steadier filing cadence. This maturation pattern is typical for established manufacturers shifting from volume-driven filing to more selective protection strategies.
Where Does the Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio Prioritize Patent Protection?
Patent geography for Changhong is overwhelmingly domestic. China accounts for 12,267 families, representing 100.0% of jurisdictions_pct share across the 7 jurisdictions captured in this dataset. The geographic chart in this section shows how thin the international footprint is by comparison, with WIPO PCT filings at just 16 families.
Beyond China and the PCT route, individual country filings are minimal: the United States shows 10 families, while the EP Patents, United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea each carry only 1 family. This distribution tells a straightforward story. Changhong protects its innovation primarily within its home market, where its manufacturing base, supply chain, and largest customer relationships are concentrated.
For competitors or partners assessing freedom to operate outside China, this geographic concentration matters significantly. Thin international filing coverage can mean lower litigation exposure abroad, but it may also reflect limited international enforcement options for Changhong itself. Businesses evaluating this portfolio for licensing or competitive positioning should weigh the domestic concentration carefully against their own target markets.
Where is the Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio Building Protection Across Key Technologies?
IPC analysis of the Changhong portfolio reveals a clear concentration in display and computing technologies. H04N (Image/Video Processing and Display) leads with 2,698 families, representing 29.1% of classified filings. This aligns directly with Changhong’s core television and display manufacturing business. The technology chart in this section shows G06F (Digital Data Processing) close behind at 1,868 families, or 20.1%.
Air conditioning technology under F24F holds 1,692 families at 18.2%, reflecting Changhong’s diversified appliance business beyond televisions. Digital information transmission (H04L) accounts for 1,164 families at 12.5%, pointing to growing investment in connectivity and networked appliances. Smaller clusters in G06Q administrative data processing, H04W wireless networks, and H01M batteries show emerging diversification into smart home and energy-adjacent technology areas.
This technology distribution confirms Changhong’s identity as a multi-category appliance manufacturer rather than a narrow electronics specialist. The weight behind display and air conditioning technology suggests continued core business investment, while the presence of battery and wireless networking clusters hints at exploratory work in connected and energy-efficient products.
How Has the Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio Evolved Across Filing Geographies?
The heatmap in this section, mapping years against jurisdictions, confirms that China has driven almost all filing volume throughout Changhong’s recent history. In 2018 alone, China recorded 1,110 families, while other jurisdictions combined contributed effectively none that year. This single-market pattern holds consistently from 2014 through 2025.
International filings appear only sporadically and in small numbers. WIPO PCT filings peaked modestly at 4 families in 2016, while United States filings reached just 2 families in both 2015 and 2016. No other jurisdiction in the matrix shows any filings across the tracked years beyond isolated single-digit entries noted earlier. This confirms that whatever international ambitions Changhong has pursued through products and brand expansion under CHiQ, its patent protection strategy has not followed at the same pace.
For stakeholders tracking Changhong’s global strategy, this gap between commercial internationalization and patent internationalization is a notable signal. It suggests either reliance on trade secrets and manufacturing know-how abroad, or a calculated choice to concentrate legal protection spend within China’s domestic market.
Consultant’s Perspective on Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio
The Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio reflects a mature, domestically anchored filing strategy shaped by decades of manufacturing leadership. The weight of filings in H04N and F24F technology confirms that patent activity tracks closely with actual product lines, television displays and air conditioning, rather than speculative research areas. This is a disciplined, business-aligned filing approach.
What stands out is the near total absence of international filings relative to the 12,267 China-based families. For a company operating a global brand through CHiQ, this gap deserves scrutiny from any partner or competitor assessing Changhong’s enforcement reach outside China. The elevated revoked and lapsed share, together 51.4% of the portfolio by combining both categories, also suggests opportunities for tighter portfolio maintenance discipline.
My recommendation for any party engaging with this portfolio, whether for licensing, competitive benchmarking, or investment due diligence, is to focus analysis on the granted and pending families within China first. Given the thin coverage elsewhere, assumptions about enforceability in other markets should not be made without independent verification. The portfolio rewards close reading rather than headline interpretation.
Explore Deeper Insights with Expertlancing Research
This overview only scratches the surface of what the Sichuan Changhong Patent Portfolio can reveal about competitive positioning and technology direction. Expertlancing Research helps clients go further, with family-level validation, competitor benchmarking, and custom technology landscape studies built for licensing, M&A, and R&D strategy decisions. If your business needs a sharper, verified view of this portfolio or any competitor’s, reach out to Expertlancing Research to commission a tailored patent intelligence study.