SIPO: China grants more patent rights, applications slow down in first half 2007

September 4, 2007

The State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the P.R.C. received 268,926 patent applications in the first half of 2007, up 7.3 percent as against the same period of last year, and 167,750 were granted patent rights.

Domestic patent applications accounted for 80.5 percent of the total, up 7.7 percent over the same period of last year, while foreign applications accounted for 19.5 percent, a 5.6-percent-increase compared with the first half of 2006.

SIPO accepted 104,341 invention patent applications during the first six months of the year, which was 38.8 percent of the total and 6.9 percent more than the same period of last year. The number of utility model patent applications was 74,733, accounting for 27.8 percent of the total and 1.4 percent lower as of the corresponding period of 2006. While 89,852 cases applied for design patents, which was 33.4 percent of the total applications and 16.3 percent higher than that of the same period of 2006.

The application and granting in the first six months of this year highlighted four characteristics: the amount of the three kinds of patent rights being granted increased by 40.5 percent over the first half of last year; applications for the three types of patent rights kept increasing but was slowing down; the increase of domestic invention patent applications outpaced that from abroad; all of the increased amount of domestic patent applicants was Service Applications.