Patent Applications Continue to Grow

According to the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) statistics, patent applications continue to grow in the first half of 2002. By the end of June 2002, the total number of patent applications was about 113,000, an increase of 12% than that of last year. Among these applications, 36,035 are for inventions, 44,461 are for utility models and 32,800 are for designs.

In the meantime, SIPO has expedited the examination of patent applications. SIPO reported on 1st August 2002 that it has completed more substantive examination on patent applications for inventions, an increase of 43.1% compared with the same period of last year.