China granted 233,000 invention patents in 2014

On February 11th, the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) held a press conference to publish the data about patents for invention of China in 2014. According to the data, in 2014, SIPO dealt 928,000 applications of invention patents, with a year-on-year increase of 12.5%, ranking the first place of the world for the 4th consecutive years. China granted 233,000 invention patents in 2014. Among them, 163,000 patents were domestic, up nearly 20,000 than 2013. By the end of 2014, the number of effective invention patents of China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) is 663,000, reaching 4.9 invention patents per 10,000 head of population. 

According to the data of SIPO, in 2014, the top 10 provinces/ municipalities obtaining invention patents were Beijing (23,237), Guangdong (22,276), Jiangsu (19,671), Zhejiang (13,372), Shanghai (11,614), Shandong (10,538), Sichuan (5,682), Anhui (5,184), Shaanxi (4,885) and Hubei (4,855). The top 10 enterprises obtaining invention patents were Huawei (2,409), Zhongxing (2,218), Sinopec (1,913), CESBG (524), Ocean’s King (516), BOE (484), CNPC (476), SGCC (408), CSOT (362) and H3C (336). 

Besides, SIPO released the top 10 provinces/municipalities holding effective patents by the end of 2014, which were Guangdong (111,878), Beijing (103,638), Jiangsu (81,114), Shanghai (56,515), Zhejiang (52,418), Shandong (34,775), Sichuan (21,209), Liaoning (18,417) and Shaanxi (17,575). 

Additionally, in 2014, SIPO received 26,169 international patent applications through Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), with a year-on-year increase of 14.2%. Among them, 24,007 were domestic, accounting for 91.7% and up 14.9%; 2,162 were overseas, up 6.7%. in 2014, there were 18 provinces/ municipalities respectively submitting over 100 applications through PCT. Among them, Guangdong remains the first for its 13,332 PCT applications, while Beijing, Jiangsu Shanghai and Zhejiang are separately the second to the 5th. Data also shows that the total number of the PCT applications submitted by the 5 provinces and municipalities above accounts for 85% of the whole country.