China's top intellectual property administrator said here
Thursday that China has become the third major country in the world
next to Japan and the United States to handle the application
invention patents.
In 2006, intellectual property offices across the country
received 122,318 patent applications from the Chinese and 88,172
applications from foreigners, said Tian Lipu, director of the State
Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), noting the number of domestic
and foreign applications rose 30.8 percent and 10.4 percent
respectively over those in 2005.
In the past five years, Tian said, China received about 1.964
million patent applications from both domestic and overseas
applicants, with an annual growth of 22.7 percent on the
average.
China's patent law regulates that patents fall into three
categories: invention, new design and innovative utility model.
Most of the invention patents, the most valuable in existing
three categories, came from multinationals or their localized joint
ventures. Home companies, meanwhile, contributed to the biggest
chunk of patent applications in the other two categories, according
to the SIPO.
Multinationals have taken China as an ideal place to apply for
patents, but patent authorization procedures are still
time-consuming.
Owing to bad staff shortage, the SIPO and its functioning body
China Patent Office usually need three to four years to authorize
an invention patent, which makes some innovative technologies
rampantly infringed before being effectively protected by
intellectual property laws.
China introduced the global prevailing mechanism of intellectual
property protection by adopting its first patent law in 1985.
"We have achieved a lot in protecting intellectual property,"
Tian said. "But we are still lagging far behind the developed
countries in encouraging home-bred inventions and intellectual
property awareness."
(Xinhua News Agency October 19, 2007)