All told, 2013 was a good year for this blog.

The blog averaged 83 hits per day, and our direct traffic was up over 21% to over 30,000 hits for the year.  Folks generally linger for two plus  page views. We had 56 new posts in 2013. Our most popular 2012 postings: for case developments it was Huawei/Interdigital; for legislative developments – it was the Trademark Law amendments; and for human interest it was a job opening with the US Department of Justice.   The record for the most hits on a single day belongs still to a 2012 posting on service invention regulations (430).

Most visitors to the blog came from the United States, although the UK and Hong Kong were not far behind.  All told the blog had visitors from 124 different countries last year, and they arrived through various search engines and links.  More and more visitors come from behind the great firewall of China.

I also picked up some great “multipliers” for the blog.  There are 583 people who now regularly follow the blog by email –  an increase of well over 100% since the beginning of the year.  In addition, individual postings were  shared over 2,500 times thru repostings on blog or websites.    Several blogs and news agencies picked up the posting.  In this regard, I especially want to thank: Susan Finder, for her great blog: Supreme People’s Court Monitor; Don Clarke for his Chinese law professor’s blog; Dan Harris of the China Law Blog; and may other friends inside and outside of China.

Many of you have sent me your words of encouragement by email, or by walking up to me at meetings or giving me a shout-out at conferences – and I greatly appreciate the support and getting to meet each of you in person. 

I am also indebted to my research associates at Fordham – particularly Jae Zhou, who graduated last year, and Amanda Ma.  Of course, the opinions in this blog are solely my own and shouldn’t be attributed to anybody else.

Please continue to send in your comments, your notices of forthcoming programs or your draft for a guest blog.  I can be reached at chinaipr@yahoo.com or chinaipr@hotmail.com.   If you have an idea for a topic you would like me to cover, please send that in too.

We are off to a good start for 2014! 谢谢!

Mark A. Cohen