On 6 September 2022, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) held a news briefing, during which Mr. Zhang Zhicheng, head of the Intellectual Property Protection Department of the CNIPA, reported that by the first half of 2022, the IPR protection centers across the country have concluded 16,000 right enforcement cases and accepted 64,000 cases of patent preliminary examination.

 

The mechanism of IPR protection centers was launched in 2016 by the CNIPA in collaboration with the localities to provide accelerated services of preliminary examination, validation and enforcement of IP rights, focusing on clusters of competitively advantageous industries specific to respective localities. To date, 60-plus IPR protection centers have been built across 26 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities nationwide.

 

The protection centers have been constantly expanding their scope of services. Meanwhile, the pilot work for preliminary examination of patent evaluation reports is in progress; and in terms of trademark, additional windows for accepting trademark registration applications and circuit courts handling trademark review and adjudication are coming into operation.