Three quarters of patents invented in Penang are owned by foreign organisations. This is in fact an understatement of the extent of foreign ownership of Penang’s patents, since some MNCs extend ownership of patents to the local subsidiary where the technology was invented rather than to the corporation’s headquarters. Thus almost half of Penang-invented locally assigned patents are actually owned by German company Osram Opto Semiconductors and the Japanese Nikko Group. The proportion of locally invented patents that are owned by domestic entities is low compared to Singapore, where half of Singapore-invented patents are owned by Singaporean organisations.