SIPO receives 694,000 patent applications, approves 350,000

February 20, 2008

On January 9th, 2008, the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO) released the 2007 annual patent statistics, revealing that it received 694,153 patent filings concerning inventions, utility models and designs and granted 351,782 patents in 2007, up 21.1% and 31.3% respectively compared with the previous year.
The filings for three types of patents maintained continuous and rapid growth, whereas the increase rate of domestic invention patents exceeded those from abroad.

Among all the three types of patent applications received by SIPO in 2007, 586,734 filings were domestic and 107,419 were from abroad; 245,161 filings were for inventions, 181,324 for utility models and 267,668 for designs; 380,260 filings were service filings and 313,893 were non-service ones.

Among the three types of patents granted by SIPO last year, 301,632 were domestic and 50,150 were from abroad; 67,948 patents were for inventions, 150,036 for utility models and 133,798 for designs; 182,340 patents were service patents and 169,442 were non-service ones.

The gross filings for three types of patents maintained a continuous and rapid increase in 2007; however, filings for utility model and design accounted for the majority of the total. Domestic patent filings for inventions took the primary proportion of the total, and the increase rate of domestic invention patent filings exceeded that of abroad ones. The ratio of domestic service patent filings further increased, therefore, enterprises emerged as principal innovational entities.

The situation of patent granted in 2007 featured two main characteristics: the number of patent granted for three types of patents kept increasing rapidly, and the increase rate of domestic invention patents granted was higher than that of from abroad. The increase rate of granted domestic invention patents was seventeen percentage points higher than that of abroad, and the gap between the numbers of domestic and abroad granted invention patents further narrowed.