According to the 2014 World Intellectual Property Indicators, China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) led worldwide patent application filings: in 2013 Patent Filing in China was up 26.4% from 2012, while the US only increased by 5%, Japan was actually down 4%, and South Korea was up 8%.
*Please note this article is now a few years old. For a more updated look on the Chinese patent industry, please go to “China’s Patent Boom, Machine Translation, and Filing“.
Exponential Growth in the Chinese Economy and Patent Filing in China
As its economy has grown exponentially, so has the rate of patent filing in China. Regardless of whether it is through invention or imitation, the numbers clearly show that China has surpassed all other countries in the number of patents filed domestically.
In addition, 85% of those have been filed by local firms rather than Chinese divisions of multinational companies. This is in stark contrast to the US and some western European countries, whose patents are granted in large numbers to foreigners, including, to a large extent, China.
Patent Filing in China | Affordability and Ease of Filing Domestic Patents
The Chinese government is looking to increase patent filings, providing financial incentives and subsidies. This has enabled more small businesses to afford filing for patents.
Many of the patents in China are filed as Utility Model patents (UM) rather than invention patents; these are faster and easier to obtain, and they do not exist in the US or the UK.
The relative ease of filing these patents in addition to the incentives provided by the Chinese government means that Chinese companies within China own many UM patents. This explains in part why patent filing in China has increased so drastically in recent years.
Patent Filing in China | Quantity of Quality, or an Appreciate for Innovation?
These factors may have led to a focus on quantity over quality and many of these patents have been for imitation rather than invention. However, this means that Chinese businesses file more and file first, leaving other businesses open to being copied when they don’t do the same.
Currently, China is the only country with a growth rate in the double digits. China does have increasingly high levels of R&D spending, and is catching up to the US. However, the difference is that for every million dollars spent, 3.5 Chinese patents are filed; in contrast, the US files 0.9 per million spent.
China clearly recognizes the importance of patents in a large economy, and other countries are slow to catch on in comparison. China has realized that this is the key to making the shift from low-value, low-cost manufacturing to fostering innovation.
China’s International Patents
Though Chinese companies do not file internationally nearly as often as they do domestically, the world’s number one applicant for the company with the most international patents in 2014 was the Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.
According to the World Intellectual Property Rights Organization (WIPO), as of 2013 China ranked third in the amount of international patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, preceded only by the US and Japan.
This treaty makes it possible to simultaneously file for patent protection in each of 148 contracting countries with a single international patent application. It is plausible to think that these rankings may reshuffle in the near future; however, in order to truly succeed, Chinese companies must put more emphasis on the quality of their international patent filings.
Challenges in Chinese Patent Translation
For Chinese patents, the process of filing is complicated by the fact that these patents must often be translated from Chinese into various Latin-based languages.
This is challenging in of itself due to the vast differences in grammar, scripts, sentence structure, words with multiple meanings, and implied subjects. Additionally, translators must be fluent in industry specific terminology and nomenclature in each of the required languages.
Professional translators will also tell you that translations between different Asian languages are actually considered among the most difficult and require a great amount of expertise. Clearly as patent filing in China increases, there will be a corresponding growth in the need for high-quality Chinese patent translation. These patent translation services must be done by linguists who are native speaking, have a technical background in the field of innovation, and knowledge of patents laws and cultural business etiquette.
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