In 2006, the State Intellectual Property Office of P. R. China (SIPO) received totally 573,178 applications for three kinds of patents (inventions, utility models and designs), a 96,914 or 20.3% increase over the previous year. The patent fillings showed the following features:

 

(1) The total amount of the three kinds of patent applications kept a constant and stable increase, with an even higher growth rate for invention patent. From 2000 to 2006, the average growth rate of over 20% was achieved in seven consecutive years for both the total amount of three kinds of patent applications and invention patent. The annual growth rate of inventions in 2006 was up to 21.4%. From 1985 to 2006, applications for invention patent amounted to 1,089,515, or over one million in the aggregate.

 

(2) Domestic applications for three kinds of patents experienced a higher growth than foreign ones, which increased in 2006 by 22.8%, 12.4% higher than that of 10.4% hike of foreign applications.

 

(3) Domestic applications for invention patent witnessed substantially faster growth over foreign ones, which increased by 30.8%, 20.4% higher than that of 10.4% hike of foreign applications. In 2006, 122,318 domestic applications for invention patent were filed with SIPO, which were 1.39 times over 88,172 foreign applications.

 

Table 1 Applications for Three Kinds of Patents According to Service and Non-Service in 2006

 

Table 2 Distribution of Domestic Service and Non-Service Applications, 2006

 

 

(4) Domestic service applications for three kinds of patents enjoyed a higher growth rate than non-service applications. 203,566 domestic service applications were filed in 2006, which was an increase of 44,684 or 28.1% rise over the previous year. At the same time, non-service applications only increased by 19.0%. Therefore, service applications resulted in the growth rate of 9.1% higher than that of non-service applications. Among domestic service applications, the invention patent applications reached the amount of 81,485, which was an increase of 19,215 or 30.9% over the previous year.

 

(5) Enterprises became the main source of domestic service applications for three kinds of patents. In view of domestic applicant for service applications for three kinds of patents, industry and mining, colleges and universities, scientific research institutes, government organs and other organizations accounted for 82.0%, 11.3%, 4.8% and 1.9% of the total applications respectively.

 

By December 31st, 2006, an accumulated number of 3,334,367 patent applications were received by the Office, among which 2,727,857 were domestic applications, or 81.6%, and 606,510 were foreign applications, or 18.4%.

 

 

 

 

 

In the year of 2006, China received patent applications from 94 countries and regions, of which Namibia and Bangladesh were for the first time to join the list. The top 10 countries and regions in terms of application volume in 2006 were Japan, USA, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, UK, Italy and Sweden. By December 31st, 2006, 134 countries and regions had filed patent applications in China.

 

 

 

Table 3 Top Ten Domestic Enterprises According to Their Applications in 2006

 

Table 4 Top Ten Domestic Universities and Colleges According to Their Applications in 2006

 

Table 5 Top Ten Domestic Scientific Research Institutes According to Their Applications in 2006

 

Table 6 Top Ten Foreign Corporations According to Their Applications in 2006

 

Table 7 Top Ten Domestic Enterprises According to Their Applications of Invention in 2006

 

Table 8 Top Ten Domestic Universities and Colleges According to Their Applications of Invention in 2006

 

Table 9 Top Ten Domestic Scientific Research Institutes According to Their Applications of Invention in 2006

 

Table 10 Top Ten Foreign Corporations According to Their Applications of Invention in 2006

 

Table 11 Top Ten Provinces and Municipalities According to Their Applications Filed in 2006

 

Table 12 Top Ten Countries According to Their Applications Filed in 2006

 

 

In 2006, SIPO granted 268,002 patents, with an increase of 25.2% or 53,999 over the previous year. Among them, 57,786 were for invention, which was an increase of 4,481 or 8.4%; 107,655 for utility models, with an increase of 28,306 or 35.7%; and 102,561 for designs, with an increase of 21,212 or 26.1%.

 

By December 31st, 2006, SIPO had granted an accumulated total of 1,737,504 patents.

 

1.4 Improvement of Patent Examination Capacity

 

In 2006, SIPO further enhanced its patent examination capacity both in external performance and internal foundation by comparison with the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, and it was reflected in the following two aspects:

 

(1) Patent examination witnessed constant increase of quantity, higher efficiency and improved quality. In 2006, the Office concluded substantive examination for 81,174 applications for invention patent, achieving an increase of 10.7% over the previous year and maintained an average annual growth of 28.1% over the year 2001, during which 23,526 applications were concluded. The actual duration for substantive examination cycle decreased by 30.2 months, from 53 months in 2001 to 22.8 months in 2006. In the cases of utility model and design, the Office concluded examination respectively 146,983 and 151,110 applications in 2006, resulting in 45.7% and 44.3% increase over the previous year. The examination cycle was 8.5 months for utility models, 2.5 months shorter than the previous year and 5.8 months for designs, 2.2 months shorter.

 

Table 13 Applications for Patents for Inventions and Utility Models Classified According to IPC in 2006

 

Table 14 Top Ten IPC Sub-Classes of Applications for Patent for Inventions in 2006

 

Table 15 Top Ten IPC Sub-Classes of Applications for Patent for Utility Models in 2006

 

 

 

Table 16 Three Kinds of Domestic and Foreign Patents Granted According to Service and Non-Service in 2006

 

 

 

 

(2) The team of patent examiners was further enlarged while the staff structure was constantly optimized and better personnel quality achieved. In 2006, SIPO newly recruited 535 employees, covering various field, inter alia, preliminary examination, procedure management, substantive examination, re-examination and invalidation, making the total number of examining staff to 2,170 at the end of the year. In high profile technical fields like electronics, telecommunication, light and electric, the number of examiners increased faster than the growth of patent applications, thus decreasing the per-capita examination workload in stock by 20% to 30%. The average period of higher education for examiners was longer than before, due to the fact that 72% of those substantive examiners newly recruited in 2006 had Master's degree while the figure was only 16% in 2001.