BEIJING, Apr.27 (China IP News) -- Lately, SIPO released an annual report on PTC system in China 2015. According to the report, there are five characteristics should be noticed.

Firstly, international patent applications through PCT filed by Chinese users continue to climb, the quality of the patents, however remains to be improved. Statistics from WIPO showed that China has filed 29,800 PCT applications in 2015, making it the third largest applicant in the world with an annual growth of 16.4% since 2011. However, PCT applications entering into national phase by Chinese users are still few in number.

Secondly, high fee is the main obstacle for Chinese users to file PCT applications. Although PCT offers fee reduction to applicants, respondents say that the fee reduction policy on international phase fail to cover the medium small and micro-sized enterprises, universities and scientific institutions, more applicants could get benefit from this policy.

Thirdly, PCT applications account for almost 80% of the international patent filings in China, far more than those through Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. This means that Chinese users have large demand for overseas patent protection via PCT. According to a representative from SIPO, due to the language variation, law system difference, limited information access and complexity of the patent system, the patent examination period is too long, the efficiency is low and the patent right is unstable.

Fourthly, most of the medium and small sized enterprises and some of the enterprises preparing to go overseas have limited knowledge about PCT system. They hope that they could have more training on PCT system and practical skills.  

Fifthly, 60.89% of the respondents say that quality of the international searching report completed by SIPO is high. Still, some respondents hold that there is much room for improvement, such as the sufficiency of evidence, evaluation basis, understanding of the technical scheme, and relevance and comprehensiveness of the quoting documents. All the respondents believe that the CEPCT system developed by SIPO has played positive role in improving PCT application efficiency and simplifying the procedures. Also, they point out that stability of the system should be improved.

2016-04-27

2016-04-27