Source: SIPO              Date: 2007/10/15

According to the data provided by the State Intellectual Property Office, in the first six months of this year, it had accepted 141,523 patent applications, which increased by 24.9% compared with that of the same period of last year. Among all the applications, 48,669 cases were applications for invention, 49,994 cases were applications for utility model, and 42,860 cases were applications for design, which represents an increase of 35.1%, 12.4% and 30.5% respectively compared with the cases accepted in the same period of last year. The patent applications for invention, for utility model and for design account for 34.4%, 35.3% and 30.3% of all the applications respectively. In the first six months of this year, totally 82,057 patent applications were granted, which represents an increase of 23% compared with last year's 66,697 patents granted.

In the past three years, the yearly application numbers increased consecutively at a rate of over 20%.

For the first time in eight years, the domestic applications for invention exceed overseas applications in quantity. Since China became a PCT member state in 1994, the number of overseas applications for invention increased greatly, which exceeded the domestic applications since than. In the first six months of this year, the number of domestic applications for invention reached 25,357, which has already exceeded the 23,312 overseas applications for invention.

During the first six months of this year, 16,309 patent applications for invention were granted, increased by 63.6% compared with that of the same period of last year.

It was also reported that up to June 30, 2003, the State Intellectual Property Office had accepted 1,764,161 patent applications and granted 965,095 patents in total.