According to the latest data released by the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO) recently, in the year of 2013, it had received 825,000 patent applications for invention, increasing 26.3% year-on-year, and granted 208,000 patents for invention, falling 4.1% year-on-year. The responsible officer of the Planning and Development Department of SIPO remarked that the application and grant of patents for invention of 2013 have three main features: the patent applications for invention accounted for more than one third of the total amount of patent applications for the first time ever; amount of granted patents for invention dropped slightly; and intellectual property of enterprises gradually steadied its dominating position in China.

The released data also indicated that including invention, utility model, and design, SIPO had received 2,377,000 patent applications altogether and granted 1,313,000 patents, increasing 15.9% and 4.6% year-on-year respectively.

From the data, we could see that the amount of patent applications for invention kept a rapid growth with a growth rate ranking the first among all three patents. With the proportion of 34.7%, patent applications for invention accounted for more than one third of the total patent applications for the first time ever. Among the patent applications for invention, there were 705,000 domestic applications, increasing 31.8% year-on-year; domestic employee invention applications accounted for 81.0% of the total patent applications for invention with a growth of 33.4%. According to the analysis from the responsible officer of Planning and Development Department of SIPO, the data indicated that the structure of patent applications had been further optimized, and the quality of patent applications had been gradually enhanced. In addition, China’s endeavor to improve the quality of patents for invention had made initial effects, as the amount of granted patents for invention fell 4.1% year-on-year. Among the granted patents, there were 144,000 domestic patents, same with the amount of the year of 2012, while the granting of foreign patents fell 12.3% year-on-year. It’s worth mentioning that Chinese enterprises applied for 427,000 patents for invention in the year of 2013, accounting for 60.6% of the total amount in China; and they had been granted 79,000 patents for invention, accounting for 54.9% of the total amount in China. All these reflected that intellectual property of enterprises had gradually steadied its dominating position in China’s IP field.

Date: January 8, 2014           
Source: State Intellectual Property Office