2022 Annual Report of the China National Intellectual Property Administration: 955,000 Patent Applications Were ‘Abnormal’

On June 5, 2023, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released the 2022 Annual Report of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (国家知识产权局2022年度报告) including statistical data on 2022 patent application filings.  In 2022 CNIPA identified 955,000 abnormal patent applications (up 17% on 2021) and 372,100 malicious trademark registrations (down slightly from 2021).  As there was a total of 5,365,000 patent applications (invention, utility model and design) filed in 2022, then almost 18% of patent applications in 2022 were abnormal (assuming that the total number of applications filed includes the abnormal applications and have not been removed from the statistics).

Other data patents follow:

Patent Prosecution

• the number of invention patent applications in China was 1.619 million, a year-on-year increase of 2.1%;
• the number of authorized invention patents granted was 798,000, a year-on-year increase of 14.7%;
• the number of utility model patent applications was 2.951 million, a year-on-year increase of 3.5%;
• the number of authorized utility model patents was 2.804 million, a year-on-year decrease of 10.1%;
• the number of design patent applications was 795,000, a year-on-year decrease of 1.4%; and
• the number of authorized design patents was 721,000, a year-on-year decrease of 8.2%.
• The invention authorization rate was not released for 2022 but was almost 55% in 2021.

Trademark Prosecution

• the number of trademark registration applications was 7.516 million, a year-on-year decrease of 20.5%;
• the number of trademark registrations was 6.177 million, a year-on-year decrease of 20.2%; and
• the average review period for trademark registration applications is stable at 4 months, and the general trademark registration period is stable at 7 months. 

Patent Reexamination and Invalidation

• 63,000 patent reexamination cases were concluded in 2022, up 16.1%, including:
  • Revocation of rejection, accounting for 48.8%;
  • Maintain rejection and others, accounting for 51.2%.
  • the average time to conclude a reexamination was 17.2 months.
• 7,879 invalidation cases were concluded in 2022, up 11.5%, including:
  • Invention:
    • All claims invalid 27.9%;
    • Partially invalid 15.4%;
    • Remain valid 56.7%.
  • Utility Model:
    • All claims invalid 41.4%;
    • Partially invalid 18.7%;
    • Remain valid 39.9%.
  • the average time to conclude an invalidation was 5.7 months.

The annual report is available here (Chinese only).

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