Recently, Sichuan Provincial Government and the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the PRC jointly signed an Agreement on Establishing Patent Examination Coordination Center of SIPO in Sichuan (hereinafter refers to as Sichuan Center).
The establishment of the Center is assumed to promote IP services for local innovation and reinforce patent protection. According to the Agreement, the Sichuan Center will help to improve the examination capability in processing patent applications and strengthen the IP protection in the whole western region.
As the only patent examination center set up in western region of China, the Sichuan center is expected to hire about 2,000 patent examiners and administrative staff members by the end of 2018, capable of handling 110,000 patent applications. This is 6th patent examination coordination center after Beijing, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Hubei and Henan.
