Recently, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) released the Annual Report of Chinese Valid Patent 2012(hereinafter referred to as the report). According to the report, by the end of 2012 China had a total of 3,000,000 domestic valid patents, accounting for 85.6% of the total valid patents, an increase of 1.5% compared with that of 2011.
Of all the valid patents for invention, 473,000 were owned by Chinese applicants, 3.7% higher than that in the year 2011, representing 54.1% of the total valid invention patents. The report shows that the innovative capability of Chinese enterprises had been gradually improved. As of the end of 2011, domestic enterprises owned 1,812,000 valid patents, accounting for over 60% of all domestic valid patents. On the other hand, the number of valid patents owned by Chinese colleges and universities also greatly increased. Till the end of 2012, domestic universities owned 97,000 valid invention patents, accounting for more than 20% of all valid invention patents. The top five universities were Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Harbin Institute of Technology and Beihang University.
The report also listed the top five regions with most valid inventions patents were Guangdong Province(79,000), Beijing(70,000), Jiangsu Province(45,000), Shanghai(40,000), and Zhejiang Province(36,000).
Despite the rapid growth of patent applications, only 5.5% of Chinese valid patents is said to be able to be maintained for a life of more than 10 years, nevertheless the percentage for foreign patents is 26.1%.
