CNIPA Publishes China's 2018 IP Statistics
On 10 January 2019, China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) published its first annual statistics that covered patents, trademarks, geographical indications (GI) and layout designs for integrated circuits (IC) since its organisational changes last year, by which its roles were expanded to include administration of the country's trademarks and geographical indications in addition to patents.
In terms of patents, invention patent filings in China amounted to 1.542 million in 2018. During the year, CNIPA granted 432,000 invention patents, with 346,000 of them being domestic invention patents. For PCT international patent applications, 55,000 applications (up 9.0% year-on-year) were accepted by CNIPA in 2018, of which 52,000 were domestic applications (up 9.3% year-on-year).
Regarding trademarks, China saw the number of trademark registration applications amounting to 7.371 million and approved registration to 5.007 million in 2018. Among the registered trademarks of the year, 4.797 million were domestic registered trademarks. For Madrid trademark international registration, 6,594 applications were filed by domestic applicants in 2018.
As for GI, CNIPA approved 67 GI products, registered 961 GI trademarks, and approved 223 businesses for the use of special marks for GI products during the year, whereas in respect of IC layout designs, 4,431 applications for registration of IC layout designs (up 37.3% year-on-year) were received and 3,815 certificates for IC layout designs (up 42.9% year-on-year) were issued by CNIPA in 2018.