The statistics released by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) show that, as of November 2010, a total of 1,092,500 patent applications had been filed in China. For the first time in history, the number of patent applications in one year breaks 1 million.
Of all the applications, 323,266 are patent applications for inventions, accounting for 32.3%, 337,659 applications for utility models and 340,000 for designs.
SIPO introduced that the patent applications reached 100,000 in 1996 and in the year of 2001, the number was over 200,000. In 2006, the applications were 500,000.
The continuous growth of patent applications is a result of economic growth in China and the investment in science and technology as well as the increase of the innovation and creation. However, the rapid growth of patent applications can no hide the difference in high quality patent applications, especially in the area of high emerging technologies.
