Chinese Patent Application of 2006 Assumes Five Characteristics

February 12, 2007

China sees five features in patent applications in 2006: a) sustained growth in volume of patent applications; b) growth of three categories of domestic applications at a higher rate year-on-year than external ones; c) growth of domestic invention patent applications at a higher rate year-on-year than external ones; d) growth of domestic service patent applications at a higher rate year-on-year than external ones; and e) enterprises have become the major force in the three categories of service patent application.

During the period of 2000 - 2006, the aggregate of the three categories of patent application and invention patent application increased at an annual average rate of over 20% for 7 successive years. In 2006 the annual growth of the three categories of patent application was 20.3%, among them that of invention patent application was 21.4%; and domestic patent applications increased at 22.8% year-on-year, 12.4 percentage points than 10.4% of the external ones. There were 122,318 domestic invention patent applications, which was 1.39 times the number of 88,172 of the external ones. Domestic three categories of service patent application registered a growth rate of 28.1%, that of non-service patent applications recorded a growth rate of 19.0%, on a year-on-year basis. The growth of applications was 9.1 percentage points than that of non-service ones.

What is most worth mention is that, among the three categories of domestic service patent application, those from industrial and mining enterprises, institutes of higher learning and academies of science and research, and government agencies and public undertakings accounted for 82.0%, 11.3%, 4.8% and1.9%, respectively. Those by industrial and mining enterprises reported a growth rate of 31.0% year-on-year, higher than that of domestic service patent applications.

The rapid, sustained growth of domestic patent applications indicated two significant changes: one is that Chinese research and development is further advanced to a higher level; and the other is that the awareness of the public about patent is upgraded remarkably. Patent applications by domestic industrial and mining enterprises exceeded 80% of the total domestic service patent applications, and, moreover, its year-on-year growth rate is higher than that of service patent applications. That fully proved that Chinese enterprise units have paid ever more attention to protecting the new achievements of their self-renovation by legal means, and they have gradually become the main subject for self-renovation. At the same time, patent applications by external companies sustained a high growth rate, and that growth of such applications from some countries in China is higher than that in their home nations. All this shows that Chinese socialist market economic system is being complete, with a further improved conditions for intellectual property protection, and strong attractiveness to foreign businesses.