China’s Patent and Trademark Statistics for 2017
The State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) of China have recently released some statistics on filings, grants, and protection of patent and trademark in China for 2017. This article provides some of the key facts and figures from these sources for your kind reference.
I. Patent filings and grants
According to the statistics of SIPO, during year 2017, a total of 3,697,845 applications, comprising 1,381,594 for invention patent, 1,687,593 for utility model patent, and 628,658 for design patent were received by SIPO, and a total of 1,836,434 patents, comprising 420,144 invention patents, 973,294 utility model patents, and 442,996 design patents, were granted.
In respect of the patent applications for invention in 2017, 1,245,709 applications were filed by domestic applicants and 135,885 by foreign applicants, accounting for 90.2% and 9.8% of the total invention patent applications filed during the year respectively. As for invention patents granted during the year, 326,970 were to domestic applicants and 93,174 to foreign applicants, accounting for 77.8% and 22.2% of the total invention patents granted during the year respectively.
For the rankings of leading enterprises, it is worth noting that SIPO has indicated no rankings of domestic enterprises by number of patent filings in China will be published from this year on, for the purpose of reinforcing the advocacy of patent quality. As for the rankings of top 10 domestic enterprises in China (not including Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR, and Taiwan) by number of invention patent grants in 2017, they are detailed in Table 1 below.
Table 1
Top 10 domestic enterprises in China (not including Hong Kong SAR,
Macao SAR, and Taiwan) by number of invention patents granted in 2017
|
Ranking
|
Patentee
|
No. of Patent Grant
|
|
1
|
State Grid Corporation of China
|
3,622
|
|
2
|
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
|
3,293
|
|
3
|
China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation
|
2,567
|
|
4
|
BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd.
|
1,845
|
|
5
|
ZTE Corporation
|
1,699
|
|
6
|
Lenovo (Beijing) Ltd.
|
1,454
|
|
7
|
Gree Electric Appliances, Inc. of Zhuhai
|
1,273
|
|
8
|
Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Co., Ltd.
|
1,222
|
|
9
|
PetroChina Company Limited
|
1,008
|
|
10
|
Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Shanghai) Corporation
|
862
|
In addition, SIPO as a receiving office under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) received 50,674 international patent applications in 2017. Of the PCT applications, 47,492 were filed by domestic applicants and 3,182 by foreign applicants, accounting for 93.75% and 6.3% of the total PCT applications filed during the year respectively. Besides, 7 Chinese provinces/municipalities filed over 1,000 PCT applications (see Table 2) in 2017, which altogether represented over 90% of the domestic PCT applications filed during the year.
Table 2
Ranking of Chinese provinces/municipalities filing
over 1,000 PCT Applications in 2017
|
Ranking
|
Province/Municipality of Patentee
|
No. of Applications
|
|
1
|
Guangdong
|
26,800
|
|
2
|
Beijing
|
5,100
|
|
3
|
Jiangsu
|
4,600
|
|
4
|
Shanghai
|
2,100
|
|
5
|
Shandong
|
1,700
|
|
6
|
Zhejiang
|
1,400
|
|
7
|
Hubei
|
1,300
|
During the year, the Patent Reexamination Board of SIPO received 34,123 requests for patent reexamination (up 160% year-on-year) and 4,565 requests for patent invalidation (up 15%).
II. Trademark filings, registrations, and protection
According to the data released by SAIC, in 2017, applications for trademark registration in China reached 5,748,000, an increase of 55.7% year-on-year. On cumulative basis, as of the end of 2017, applications for trademark registration amounted to 27,842,000, approved registrations to 17,301,000, and approved registrations in force to 14,920,000 in China.
During the year, 4,810 domestic applicants, up 59.6% year-on-year, filed for international trademark registration under the Madrid System, placing China the third among members of the Madrid Protocol for international trademark applications.
In terms of trademark protection, the administrations for industry and commerce and the market supervision departments in China placed emphasis on the protection of well-known marks, geographical indications, foreign-related marks, and time-honoured marks during the year. In addition, 30,000 cases of illegal trademark acts (down 5.1% year-on-year) were investigated and handled nationwide in 2017, of which 27,000 (down 4.3%) related to infringement and passing-off of trademarks.
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