Source: China IP News

SIPO held the third quarter (2018) press conference in Beijing on July 10, marking not just its third face-to-face with the press, but its first centralized release of statistics concerning patent, trademark and geographical indication after its organizational overhaul. In the first half of 2018, the main IP indexes all stay in the fast lane with invention patent filings registering at 751,000 and invention patent grants 217,000, trademark applications 3,586,000 and GI applications 10.

As said above, the first half witnessed 751,000 invention patent applications and 217,000 grants, 171,000 of which were granted to domestic applicants. Among these granted domestic invention patents, 159,000 were done under employment, accounting for 93.2% of the total, and the remaining 12,000 or 6.8% were non- duty inventions. As of the end of June, China had housed 1,475,000 valid invention patents in total (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), the number of invention patents per ten thousand population was 10.6. In addition, a total of 23,000 international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) were received by SIPO, up 6.3%. The 21,600 PCT applications filed by domestic applicants logged a more impressive 7.6%.
   
In the first half, 3,586,000 applications of trademark registration were filed, and 3,065,000 applications were examined. As of the end of June, China had cumulatively received 31,428,000 trademark applications and registered 19,395,000 trademarks, 16,807,000 of which are still in force, with one valid trademark owned by every 6.1 market entities. The registration of 4,395 collective marks and certification trademarks of GIs were approved, 171 of which were of foreign origin. Trademark examination pendency was constricted to 7 months from 8 months.

In the first half, there were 10 applications of geographical indication products protection received, 46 geographical indication protection products approved, and 135 companies examined to use the special marks of geographical indication products. As of the end of June, there had been 2,359 geographical indication products under protection, 2,298 domestic ones and 61 foreign ones. There had been 24 national geographical indication products protection demonstration areas designated and 8,091 companies certified to use these special marks, riding a total protection value of more than 1 trillion RMB.

Four features could be summed up from the statistics above. The first one is the steady progress of IP creation and application. The domestic granted and owned invention patents increased 6.5% and 19.5% respectively compared with the same time last year, the number of invention patents divided by ten thousand population increased 0.8 compared with late 2017; the level of trademark registration facilitation improved steadily, with the applications of trademark registration a year-on-year increase of 57.5%. The second one is that the position of domestic enterprises invention proprietors is elevated. Among the granted domestic invention patent and housed ones, the part of enterprises cover 63.8% and 67.2% respectively; the maintenance rate for five years and longer of domestic enterprises valid invention patent reaches 71.2%. The third one is the steady improvement foreign IP applications for domestic enterprises. In the first six months, there were 17 enterprises which submitted more than 100 PCT international patent applications each; in the first five months, there were 2,228 applications of  international trademark registration under the Madrid System, representing a year-on-year increase of 80.69%, which ranks third in the Madrid Union.  The fourth one is the optimization of the IP protection environment. In the first half of this year, the total number of patent administrative cases increases 29.5% year on year, of which patent disputes cases increases 41.0% year on year; 13,600 trademark illegal cases are solved with more than 210 million RMB involved in the cases. China is refining its business and innovation environment.