1. Patent Documentation Service

Collection and exchanges of patent documentation: the SIPO collected a total of 3.4 million full-text patent specifications of thirty countries and international organizations in 2002. This group included 1.7 million were early documents of the United States, patent search CD-ROMs from eighty-eight countries and international organizations, and 1,984 patent gazettes of forty kinds from twenty-eight countries and international organizations. In 2002, the SIPO sent Chinese patent documents to twenty countries, and sent patent specifications as required by some patent offices and international patent organizations. the SIPO also sent the Annual Report of 2002 of the SIPO to twenty countries and international organizations.

Collection of non-patent documentation: The Chinese Academic Periodicals Full-text Database of the Chinese Periodical Website included 5,300 kinds of periodicals collected since 1994. In 2002, the Chinese Periodical Webstie established a new database of the full-texts of the Chinese major newspapers, which included 430 kinds of major domestic newspapers issued and published since June 2000. These databases were opened for examiners to provide an Intranet search service. The publications collected in 2002 included 115 kinds of the Chinese periodicals and 200 kinds of foreign periodicals. About 10,200 Chinese and foreign books were purchased.

Patent documentation and information service: For the purpose of making full use of patent documentation and information sources in the library and for promoting technological innovation, the SIPO organized a variety of free training courses for the public in the patent documentation library in 2002. A total of forty-six patent documentation lectures and free training courses on patent documentation computer search were organized, with a total of 184 lecture hours and 1,200 participants. About 180,000 readers and users came to the library to consult, search and read. Meanwhile, many services were provided to users, such as mailing, fax, telephone, EMS, documentation scanning, and e-mail. The Patent Documentation Department continued to distribute EPO and the WIPO patent documentation search CD-ROMs to seventy-three local IP administrations and eighteen important pilot enterprises at no cost, and presented the search CD-ROMs on English abstracts of Japanese patents to thirty-one local IP administrations. In addition, the SIPO initiated the providing of aid to enterprises and institutions to carry out training on patent documentation, organized training courses on patent documentation respectively in Nanning, Chengdu, Changchun, and Guizhou, and presented special lectures at the Military Medicine Academy, Yantai and Taiyuan.

To promote the utilization and dissemination of patent information: In 2002, the SIPO took better advantage of the patent documentation, processed and integrated all databases so as to provide special databases and to prepare analysis on patent information for local economic development and technological R & D in enterprises. The second phase of the Chinese and Foreign Patent Database was accomplished on the basis of which the Wuhan Light Valley Patent Information Database was established. Meanwhile, about ten local patent information databases including the Yangling Agricultural Patent Information Database were renewed and upgraded. On this basis, the SIPO established thirteen patent information databases for thirteen units, including the Shanghai IP Center, the Guangzhou IP Administration, the Lekai Film Group, the Science and Technology Information Center of Wujin Municipality and other similar units. In addition, to support the development of the important examination systems, about 20,000 patent files related to Chinese traditional medicine were processed and provided to the Chinese TCM Patent Database. About 14,000 patent documents in the field of Nano technology were provided for the Nano S & T Center of the Chinese Science Academy.

Report on international intellectual property information: In 2002, forty-eight issues of the Intellectual Property Newsletter were published, among which six were special issues focusing on the latest development and important events in the international intellectual property field.

Patent documentation research work: The four issues of the Patent Documentation Research (Quarterly) included a total of forty-four articles around 170,000 words, with 1,060 subscribers. Its supplementary monthly periodical the Development on Classification was published in three issues. The Patent Documentation Research focused on the report on the automation and network of patent documentation, IPC development and other topics in 2002.

2. Intellectual Property Publications

In 2002, the Intellectual Property Publishing House published (announced after grant) 193,575 patents for inventions, utility models and designs, according to law, of which 59,927 were patents for utility models, 20,481 were patents for inventions and 54,182 were patents for designs, a total of 40,785 applications for invention patents and 18,200 PCT applications were published according to law, representing an increase of 15% over 2001.  A total of 52 paper issues of the Patent Gazette with 104,000 volumes were published while 10,111,946 sheets of patent specifications were copied. A total of fifty-two issues of CD-ROMs of the Chinese Patent Gazette and patent specifications with a total of 121 sets were published. The government website of the SIPO, www.sipo.gov.cn, published (announced after grant) information of patents for inventions, utility models and designs, to the public according to the legal requirements on publishing dates. Every day about 3,500 hits were logged on the homepage of the website, and about 8,000 patent searches were carried out. The Electronic Publication System was transformed and achieved its first phase, and was put into trial use in November.

In 2002 the book publishing work achieved comprehensive development on an original basis, and formed a developing model concentrating on intellectual property while taking construction, law and education into consideration. A total of 174 categories of books were published in 2002, among which 109 were new, and fifty categories of books were reprinted ninety-six times. The books in categories of IP have formed a publishing system with nine volumes in the series. The IP ABC, the China Intellectual Property Yearbook 2001/2002, the 2002 National Patent Agent Qualification Examination Guide, the Patent Documentation and Information, the Revised Draft and Examination Guide on Patent Applications, the Standardization and IP Strategies, and other books, were published and achieved excellent social effects, realizing a double-win situation for both the social benefits and economic benefits of book publishing.