China’s Intellectual Property Statistics for 2018
IP News
February 2019
Last month the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA, formerly known as SIPO) released statistics for the Chinese mainland in 2018. The statistics show that domestic and foreign confidence in China’s IP protection is strengthening.
The top 12 things that stood out for 2018 (in numbers):
- 1,542,000 – the number of invention patent applications filed with CNIPA
- 432,000 – the number of invention patent applications granted by CNIPA (86,000 of which were to foreign applicants)
- 3,369 – the number of invention patents granted by CNIPA to Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd (the top domestic company)
- 55,000 – the total number of PCT applications received by CNIPA (up 9.0% on 2017)
- 808,000 – the number of invention patent applications examined by CNIPA
- 10% – the amount by which the patent examination period for high-value invention patents was reduced
- 52% – the amount by which patent examination complaints fell
- 7,371,000 – the number of trade mark applications filed with CNIPA
- 5,007,000 – the number of trade mark applications granted by CNIPA (210,000 of which were to foreign applicants)
- 6,594 – the number of Madrid international trade mark applications filed with CNIPA
- 8,043,000 – the number of trade mark applications examined by CNIPA
- < 6 – the average number of months for trade mark examination
By the end of 2018, the cumulative number of invention patents held by the Chinese mainland was 1,602,000, and the number of invention patents owned per 10,000 head of population reached 11.5.
As for trade marks, the cumulative number of registrations in mainland China by the end of 2018 (excluding those applied for by foreign applicants and the Madrid process) was 18,049,000, and the number of trade marks owned per 10,000 market entities reached 1,724. These numbers look set to rise steadily throughout 2019.
These figures further illustrate the increasing importance of IP protection in China. If you have an invention, design or trade mark which you are looking to protect in China, or anywhere else in the world, do not hesitate to get in touch.
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