IPRdaily Releases Ranking of Patent Agencies in China in Terms of Invention Patents Granted
Recently, intellectual property media IPRdaily and IncoPact Innovation Index Research Centre have jointly released the ranking of patent agencies with over a hundred patent attorneys in China on the basis of the number of invention patents that the agencies were granted in respect of the patent applications they handled for the clients.
The number of invention patents in the ranking came from data (excluding those from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) published by China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) as of 7 May 2019; and the number of patent attorneys employed by respective patent agencies was from figures available on the website of All-China Patent Attorneys Association (ACPAA) as of 8 May 2019.
The ranking embraced thirteen qualified firms. Top on the list was China Patent Agent (H.K.) Ltd. with 186,065 invention patents granted, and the second to the thirteenth in order were: CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office; Liu, Shen & Associates; Shanghai Patent & Trademark Law Office, LLC.; China Science Patent & Trademark Agent Limited; Unitalen Attorneys at Law; NTD Patent & Trademark Agency Ltd.; Beijing Sanyou Intellectual Property Agency Ltd.; King & Wood Mallesons; Lung Tin Intellectual Property Agent Ltd.; Advance China IP Law Office; Scihead Intellectual Property; and Beijing Beyond Attorneys At Law.
As pointed out in the ranking report, patent agency is a specialised, high-end service that incorporates technology and law to facilitate the creation, exploitation and protection of intellectual property. In China, it is stipulated in law that a patent attorney may only serve the client via a patent agency he is employed with and may not accept any entrustment directly from the applicant, and hence, the scale of its patent attorney team may reflect to a certain degree a patent agency's overall strength and market reputation; whereas the number of invention patents granted, as an important indicator of the quality of cases handled by a patent agency, may largely reflect the overall professional competencies of the agency.
