The Promotion Project for the IP Strategy of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), which was started in December, 2009, has achieved great progress in China. The results can be showed in the following examples.
According to SIPO, in Tianjin City, one of the first pilot areas, a total of 5,000 applications were filed by 1,100 SMEs, which accounted for 71% of the applications in the whole city as of June this year; however each of the 1,100 SMEs had no patent applications before 2009. In Jiangsu City, another one of the first pilot areas, the patent applications and patent grants owned by SMEs respectively accounted for 93% and 95% of the total filings in the whole city in 2013. Patent applications and patent grants for invention accounted for 91% and 85% respectively. In Zhejiang province where comparatively more SMEs are located, the number of patent applications filed by the SMEs in 2013 was over 180,000, accounting for 60% of the total filings in the whole province, of which 125,800 patents were granted.
