Recently, Mr. Tian Lipu, Director of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), address that the development of China's IP system has been on a high speed and that the number of Chinese patent applications has been increased satisfactorily.
Mr. Tian Lipu pointed out that, in 2006 the total number of patent applications in China, including inventions, utility models and design, has exceeded 573 ,000, which are 100,000 or 20.3% more than that of 2005. The quality of the patent applications is also improved steadily. Domestic invention patent applications with high technology content have been quintupled, increasing from less than 3,500 to 122,000 during 20 years. Enterprises become the major origin of invention patent applications, with the granting rate and the implementing rate of their patents keeping at a high level.
With the rapid development of China's patent undertakings and the dramatic increase of patent applications, the patent examiner team has also been enlarged and strengthened continuously. The number of more than 2800 examiners makes SIPO one of the few offices in the world with strong examination capacity. By the year of 2010, the number is expected to reach 5000.
