According to the statistics by State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), in the first half year of 2012, China saw a great increase in both patent applications and grants.
From January to June, SIPO received a total of 857,000 patent applications and granted 530,000 patents, an increase of 26.8% and 19.1% as compared with that of the same period last year respectively.
In terms of types of the patent applications, there were 258,000 filings for invention, 316,000 for utility models and 283,000 for designs, a growth of 18.3%, 29.0% and 32.9% respectively. Among the patent applications for invention, 201,000 or 77.9% of which are from Chinese local applicants, 57,000 or 22.1% of which were from abroad. Of all the domestic patents for invention, 163,000 were service applications contributing to 81.1% and 38,000 were non-service applications accounting for 18.9%.
With regard to the grant of patent, a total of 530,000 patent applications were granted in China, of which 107,000 applications for inventions were granted, up 28.9% than that of the same period last year; 235,000 for utility models were granted, up 26.3% and 188,000 for designs were granted, up 6.8%. Of all the patent grants for invention, 70,000 were granted to domestic applicants, accounting for 65.4%; 37,000 were granted to foreign applicants, accounting for 34.6%. With regard to the grant of domestic patents for invention, 60,000 were service applications taking up 85.7%, and 10,000 were non-service applications accounting for 14.3%.
