Recently, State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) issued the "Analysis Report on Trends of Patents related to Information and Telecommunication Tin China". The report made a full analysis of the patents for inventions and utility models and the following features were given: stable growth of the applications and patents, obvious growth of domestic applications as compared to the foreign applications, consistence between China and foreign countries regarding the development of key technologies, highly concentrated areas with the patent applications, utility applications mostly from domestic companies.
The statistics show that one third of the applications for inventions are related to information and telecommunication technology. From 2003 to 2008, there were a total of 371,000 applications received by SIPO and 125, 000 patents were granted.
It is a fact that foreign companies own more patents in this area. It is also true that there was a significant growth of applications and patents by Chinese companies. In terms of the patent, the foreign companies not only own more patents but the patents are also at high levels. Most of the foreign companies are multinational companies.
Geographically, the majority of the applications are from the eastern regions in China.
