Patents of foreign companies in China reached a new record in the first half of 2021
On July 14, 2021, Fuguang Heng, deputy head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration’s general office has announced that since the beginning of 2021, there has been a great increase in the number of patents granted to multinational corporations. Furthermore, there has also been a rise in the number of trademarks registered by these corporations during the first six months of 2021.
According to the CNIPA’s statistics, there have been 339,000 patents for inventions granted from January to June, with 54,000 granted to foreign applicants. In comparison, there has been an increase of 30 percent year on year.
In the same 6 months period since the beginning of 2021, there have also been over 3.72 million trademarks registered in China, with 90,000 of them registered by foreigners, an estimated increase of 7.5 percent year on year.
Remarkably, the number of applicants from the United States that were granted patents in China increase by 35 percent. At the same time, the number of trademarks registered by US applicants increases by 8.9 percent.
One of the main reasons behind this exceptional development in patent filing and granted in China is because the reviewing process of IP-related applications in China has been greatly improved. Furthermore, China’s efforts to promote high-quality IP development have also intensified.
According to the statistics, at the end of June, the time taken to review high-value patent applications in China was reduced to 13.4 months. This is a great achievement compared to the normal time to review these applications which were 14 months in April.
Expert Opinions
Shu Ge, head of the CNIPA’s strategic planning department, said maintaining high-quality IP development, particularly the one related to core technologies, has been the top priority in his work. He also stated that in the period from January to June of 2021, he has provided and consulted many times about IP-related matters to Chinese enterprises overseas.
Fuguang Heng, deputy head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration’s general office said that: “The sustainable growth of foreign applications for patents and trademarks means foreign enterprises have confidence in our business environment, with the will to develop business activities and establish their IP layout in our nation.”
Shu Ge said that not only in mainland China, the number of patents granted to Chinese enterprises in South Korea, Japan, the US, and European countries has also seen a dramatic increase from January to May.
“According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the number of patents granted to Chinese enterprises including utility models that are substantively examined in Korea, with almost the same standard as a patent application is 250, 178, 236, 243 and 212 from January to May. I, therefore, doubt what basis the comment that the number keeps rising comes from – the numbers just went up and down,” says YungJoon Kwon, managing partner at KWON & KIM Patent & Trademark Attorneys in Seoul. “In another perspective, from January to May 2021, 61,204 (60,390 patents plus 814 utility models) were registered, among which 14,660 (24 percent) (14,576 patents plus 84 utility models) attribute to foreign entities.”
Of those 14,660 registrations, China occupied 1,094 patents (7.6 percent) and 25 utility models (25 percent) from January to May 2021, which ranked fourth after Japan, the US, and Germany.
Kwon has given his statement regarding this situation: “The interesting thing is that only two jurisdictions, China (25 percent) and Taiwan (33.3 percent) occupy almost 60 percent of utility model registrations belonging to the foreign entities, for the same period.”
The numbers just moved up and down from January to May 2021 but eventually, it did increase compared with the same months of 2020, while the share cannot be said to be increased compared with the Chinese average share in patent registrations in 2020.
“If the ranks in the number of registration or sharing percentage can be a measure of the quality of Chinese patents, it is early to say Chinese patents have higher quality now than ever,” Kwon said.
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– You could see How To Register Trademark in China here.
– You could visit here to see Procedure of Trademark in China.
– You could visit here to check Required documents of filing trademark in China.
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