Tag Archives: SIPO

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SIPO’s 2012 “Report on the Situation Regarding National Patent Strength”

SIPO’s recently released its  “Report on the Situation Regarding National Patent Strength”, (Chinese: “2012年全国专利实力状况报告”).  This report provides a glimpse into the various measures that SIPO uses to quantify how local patent offices are being rated by SIPO.  Knowing these data can be very useful in understanding what the incentives are for evaluating innovation and patent protection in China’s various localities and, accordingly, can help in how a foreign company approaches a local IP office to better enlist their support.  In theory, it should also help in identifying the regions that are affording better patent protection in China to foreigners. 

 The report  is intended to be based on certain objective, common, sustainable, and easy to obtain data.  Some of the data that is used are:

(a)    Number of invention patents in effect held per capita.  This is the first item listed by SIPO and it does not include utility model and design patents, which are not substantively examined. 

(b)   Other patent data: including Patent Cooperation Treaty patent filings; patent maintenance rates; patent abandonment rates (as a negative factor).

(c)    Type of patent applicant data: service invention patent rates; patents filed by large and medium sized enterprises.

(d)   Commercialization data: ratio of R&D to patents filed; hypothecation of patents; licensing contracts for patents; patents that are being used in commercial production (based on a ratio of new products from high tech industries and patent applications from high tech industries); and awards for high quality patents.

(e)   Litigation and enforcement data: First instance patent cases in the courts; settlement rates for patent litigation; data on patent “passing off”; data on cross-boundary cooperation on administrative patent disputes; data on human resources in administrative patent enforcement, use of administrative complaint lines, and expenses for special enforcement campaigns.

(f)     Legal and administrative structure: SIPO is trying to encourage local patent offices to be active and independent of other agencies, such as Science and Technology Bureaus, in which some local patent offices are located.  In addition, SIPO is encouraging promulgation of local legislation on patents, including incorporation of the national IP strategy and economic plans into local level policy and actions.

(g)     Cooperation with SIPO on national projects: including recognition as a model locality for IP protection, or the presence of model enterprises for IP protection.

(h)   Services and civil society: presence of in-house IP departments in companies; presence and availability of Patent Agents; use of electronic filing mechanisms for patents and electronic information services; presence of public service organizations for patents (typically government-organized non-governmental organizations); participation in SIPO training programs (including distance learning programs).

The overall leaders in this statistically-intensive report: Guangdong, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai (in that order).   Comparative data to last year and to individual benchmarks are also provided.  These five leaders are not necessarily the leaders in other areas, including those that may be of concern to foreigners.  For example, in IP protection, the leaders were: Guangdong, Shandong, Hunan, Sichuan and Jiangsu.  Beijing and Shanghai were a more distant 11th and 16th place, respectively.  Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai were also the top three jurisdictions for IP services.

The report should be used cautiously by foreign investors and rigthsholders as there is much  of concern to foreigners that is not utilized in the report, for example: numbers of foreign-related civil or administrative cases, availability of provisional measures, receptivity and accessibility of local complaint centers (including trade fairs) to  foreign complainants, availability of expert foreign language lawyers and service providers,  presence and engagement  of foreign-related civil society (INTA, QBPC, RDPAC, AmCham’s, etc.),  existence of policies that on their face discriminate or support foreign rights holders ,  availability of criminal remedies for IP infringement,  existence of “notorious markets” for IP infringing products, and evaluation of the locality by other reports on IP protection (e.g, annual Chamber reports, Section 301 reports).  In addition, as indicated above, the priorities that SIPO assigns to different factors would be different for foreigners.  Nonetheless, this is a useful report that can help foreigners in determining how “patent-friendly” different jurisdictions in China are, and can also assist in compiling a more narrowly focused report that highlights issues of concern to foreigners regarding IP protection in different regions of China.  

I also personally commend SIPO for its transparency in making this available on line.

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Litigation Meets Innovation: A Glimpse at China’s Continuing Litigation Explosions

In recent lectures I have been fond of asking: if China were to have as meteoric a pace of growth in intellectual property acquisition and enforcement as it has had in gross domestic product, what would be the impact on foreign IP-intensive industries?   Will China’s growing role in IP lead to the same kind of economic dislocations that was involved in the shift to manufacturing in China? A first glimpse at 2012 enforcement data shows some important trends which foreign companies may wish to consider in this very rapidly growing IP market.     Continue reading →

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The China IP “Hits” Parade

How do foreigners obtain on-line information on IP developments in China?  Is language a major barrier? The data from on-line hits and page views suggests that Chinese government sources may be a major source of information and that Americans are not major consumers of this data in Chinese or in English.  In fact, American-origin hits are more likely for Chinese content websites, rather than English.  However, not all foreigners are the same.   Europe had more than 10 times the utilization of the Chinese patent office websites compared to Americans.   The difference is not attributable to increased patent filings by Europeans: the US was the second largest foreign grantee of SIPO patents (78,902), after Japan, with over two times the number of grants as Germany (34,833) and about an equal number to the total patent grants to European countries in 2012, according to SIPO data. Continue reading →

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Autumnal hook 2012 update

A guest post from Zhen Lei of Penn State

Mark highlighted the phenomenon of the Autumnal Patent “Hook” at the SIPO in his blog posted early last year. The data on 2012 patent filings at SIPO again shows the same pattern (see the graph below). My colleagues at UC Berkeley and I conducted a study on the seasonality of patent filings at the SIPO, which confirms Mark’s insightful observation. Our study involves monthly patent filings at the SIPO from 1986 through 2007, and we compare domestic filings with foreign filings. We find a much stronger surge in December for domestic filings after 2001, when China started to encourage innovation and patenting. Based on the grant rate and first year renewal rate, domestic firm filings made in December after 2001 seem to be of lower validity and lower value. We posit that one plausible explanation of the surge in domestic patenting in December is that domestic firms were under political pressure to meet yearly quotas set by the local governments.

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More on the developing trends in China related to Intellectual Property from the prepared remarks of Teresa Rea, the Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for IP, delivered at Fordham Law School on January 28, 2013.

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Pop Quiz on Chinese IP

Winter semester is back in session.  How would you fare on this pop quiz on Chinese IP?

True or false:

1.  The first patent filed in the United States by someone from China was by a “subject of the Emperor China,” prior to 1911. (Hint: the answer can be found on this blog)

2. The first bilateral agreement between the United States and China on IP matters was the Treaty of Friendship Commerce and Navigation in 1979.

3.  One of the principal exports of the United States to China was a traditional Chinese medicinal product, and was the subject of an early trade war.

4.  The first case involving imports of infringing copyrighted works into the United States from China occurred in the early 1800’s. (Hint: the answer can be found on this blog)

5.  The Chinese trademark office has been the largest office in the world for over 10 years (in terms of applications).

6.  China has more per capita civil copyright litigation than the United States, and more patents and TM litigation than the US too.

7.  A large share of the IP litigation in China is filed by foreigners. (Hint: the answer can be found on this blog)

8.  China’s property law was enacted years before its intellectual property laws, helping to pave the way for market reform.

9.  China’s State Intellectual Property Office is like the USPTO and grants trademarks too.

10.  China does not have any legal provisions on exports of counterfeit goods that are beyond the bare minima required by the WTO.

Click through for the answers!

Continue reading →