SIPO: three new features of patent application in 1st half of 2007

November 6, 2007

SIPO has accepted 3,600,000 patent applications by the end of June this year, including 2,940,000 domestic applications 81.7 percent and 660,000 from overseas, which accounts for 81.7 percent and 18.3 percent respectively of the total.
The amount of invention, utility model and design applications was 1,190,000, 1,370,000 and 1,040,000, accounting for 33.1 percent, 37.9 percent and 29.0 percent respectively of the total.

Patent application, which maintained a rapid growth in the first half of this year, represents three new features:

1. In the first half of the year, the amount of three kinds of patent applications increased by 7.3 percent as against the same period of last year, remarkably slowing down after the 20-percent annual growth rate registered over the past consecutive seven years. In the first half of the year, design applications registered a rapid increase of 16.3 percent to reach 89,852 cases, and invention applications grew slightly by 6.9 percent to stand at 104,341 cases; while utility model applications totaled 74,733 cases, down 1.4 percent as compared with the same period of last year.

2. The increase rate of domestic invention applications is higher than that of overseas. While increase in invention applications slowing down around the world, the increase rate of domestic invention applications is 3 percent higher than that of overseas, and the proportion of domestic invention applications in overall applications in the first half of the year is 14 percent higher than that of overseas.

3. The increase of domestic patent applications was attributed to the growth of service applications. Compared with the same period of last year, service patent applications increased by 20 percent, non-service applications decreased by 1.4 percent, and patent applications by enterprise still increased rapidly.

Officials with SIPO pointed out that considering the three new characteristics, the increase of patent applications is expected to enter a new period of adjustment, when the increase of total amount of patent applications will slow down, domestic service invention applications will keep growing rapidly and enterprises and science research institutions will take more efforts in intellectual property protection.