As a receiving office under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), SIPO received 5,401 PCT international patent applications in 2007, up 41.2%, 5,221 or 96.7% of which were from home while the rest 180 or 3.4% were from abroad.  The increase of PCT filings by Chinese nationals is still in high gear.

Three palpable characters for the 2007 filing are identified.  First, industrialized areas such as Guangdong, Beijing and Shanghai dish out most scores.  Guangdong led the pack with 2,646, representing half of the total.  Beijing followed with 560.  Shanghai, Taiwan province and Hong Kong SAR garnered from third to fifth.  Second, companies are big users of the system.  They filed 70% of all the domestic applications.  Third, most applications are from a few technical fields.  Electric and related fields account for half of the total.

(China IP News)