Record number of invention patent applications in China
China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) reported a 14.2% increase in invention patent applications in 2017, compared to 2016.
China received 1.38 million such applications last year, according to Shen Changyu, head of SIPO, at a meeting on Thursday, January 4. He said 744,000 patents have been processed and concluded.
China is a signatory to the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which simplifies the procedure for an inventor or applicant to obtain a patent. The treaty allows applicants to file a single patent application in one country while retaining the option of filing a corresponding application in many other countries for up to 30 months.
The number of Chinese international patent applications under the treaty rose by 12.5% in 2017, giving a total of 51,000 international applications in China. The total number of international applications via the treaty from all countries grew by 7.2% in 2016, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) “ World Intellectual Property Indicators 2017” report.
China ranked third among filers under the treaty, behind the US and Japan.
According to WIPO, SIPO received the highest number of patent applications in 2016. A record total of 1.3 million applications were submitted in China, which was more than the combined totals for the US, Japan, Europe, and South Korea.
Changyu said the “protection of IP should be further strengthened to create a favourable market environment, while the application of IP should be strengthened to better support the real economy”. Changyu is also an advocate of more international cooperation in IP.
In 2016 China announced altered patent examination guidelines to relax the barriers to patents for software and business technologies. In 2017 new regulations were announced by SIPO to streamline the process for the examination of patent applications in certain fields such as big data and cloud computing.
Globally, 3.1 million patent applications were filed in 2016, which was an increase of 8.3% from 2015.
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