WIPO has added China's national patent collection to the searchable PATENTSCOPE database, pushing the service past the 30 million record mark and increasing it to 34 national and regional patent collections, giving users an unrivalled geographical diversity of fully-searchable data.

With the addition of about 3 million documents from China, WIPO's PATENTSCOPE now includes some 32.5 million records that users can search for information about new technologies, which are often disclosed for the first time as international patent applications.

PATENTSCOPE provides access to international Patent Cooperation Treaty applications in full text format on the day of publication. The information may be searched by entering keywords, names of applicants, international patent classification and many other search criteria in multiple languages.

"The addition of the patent collection from the People's Republic of China is another big step forward for PATENTSCOPE, which is a unique world-wide service for players in the global race to conceive, produce and market new products," said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. "These documents will give users a fresh, important perspective on the workings of one of the world's most-dynamic economies."

PATENTSCOPE users now have access to English-language bibliographic data of Chinese patents and patent applications from 1985 through 1995 and from 1996 onwards the submissions include bibliographic data in English and Chinese, as well as descriptions and claims in Chinese.  In 2011, Chinese residents filed 415,829 patent applications, the most of any country in the world for the second year running.

(Source: WIPO)