June 27, 2006-a day worth marking on the history of China's efforts on intellectual property rights. On this day, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People's Republic of China again announced exciting news: the total number of patent applications in China broke 3 million, which laid a new milestone for the development of the patent field in China.

 

"From the implementation of the Patent Law of China to the beginning of 2000, we have gone through nearly 15 years to reach the first 1 million applications. Since then, we have gone through another 4 years and two months to reach the second "one million". However, the time span shorted to 2 years and 3 months for us to reach the third "one million," said Tian Li-Pu, Director of SIPO. "The swift and continuous growth of patent applications in China embodies the great-leap-forward development of the intellectual property (IP) rights industry in China as well as the urgent demands of intellectual property rights while China is developing her economy and society."

 

It is understood that the third "one million" applications have the following characteristics compared to the previous two:

 

The growth of patent application is accelerating at a surprising pace. The increase of application for inventions is even more noticeable. In the past consecutive six years, the total numbers of the three types of patent applications that China is currently accepting have all grown by over 20% on average annually, while the number of patent application for inventions has grown by over 25% on average annually. In 2005, the total number of the applications for the three types reached 476,000, expanding by 34.6% when compared to the figure of the previous year. The number of invention patent applications reached 173,000, ranking the third place in the world. From January to May 2006, the total number of the applications for the three types reached 204,000, an increase of 30% when compared to the figure of the previous year. The number of invention patent applications reached approximately 80,000, growing by 33% year-on-year.

 

The structure of the three types of patent applications have had significant changes and the quality of patent applications is upgrading steadily. In the first two "one million" applications, the invention patents applications accounted for 27.6% and 32.4% respectively, while practical novelty and design patents applications accounted for 72.4% and 67.6% respectively. In the third "one million" applications, the invention patents applications accounted for 37.2%, while practical novelty and design patents applications accounted for 62.8%. This shows that invention patents, which are able to generate more revenue, are increasing. In the three "one million" patent applications, the structure of patent owners also had dramatic changes. Invention patents applications filed by Chinese applicants accounted for 47.7%, 50.8% and 53.1%.

 

The percentage of domestic applicants increase further. Enterprises are more aggressive in applying for patents. In the three "one million" patent applications that China has accepted, domestic applicants accounted for 31.3%, 39.0% and 41.2% in domestic patent applications respectively. In this category of applicants, the percentage of patents applications filed by enterprises went up from 64% in the first "one million" to over 80% in the following two "one million". This growth has far exceeded the percentage of science and technology research institutions, colleges and universities. With respect to invention patents, the percentage of patents applications filed by enterprises went up from below 40% in the first "one million" to 65% in the following two "one million".

 

Looking at the data, experts reckon that the rapid growth of patent applications and changes of the structure in recent years have shown that China's patent system is to inspire the entire society to invent, create, promote technological innovation and exert the ever-increasing functions of the system. The entire society is obviously much more aware of protecting intellectual property rights, and enterprises, research institutions and organizations and higher education institutions are also becoming more capable of utilizing intellectual property rights. In the meantime, this has indicated, from another face, that the development of the patent industry is moving in tandem with the soaring Chinese economy.

 

Experts emphasize that patent applications in China are now in the phase of rapid development and they expect that the time to reach the fourth "one million" will yet again be shortened by a large extent.

2006-07-04

2006-07-04