This year China becomes the first country to break the 700,000 patent filings per year barrier, far outstripping No. 2 Japan and far outdistancing every other country in the world in terms of domestic patent filings.

Statistics available for the year 2007 from SIPO – China’s national patent office in Beijing – demonstrate a remarkable increase in the number of patent filings that approached an annual rate of 700,000 filings per year.

Design Patents, A Largely Untapped Tool for Foreign Manufacturers

Americans and other foreign entities file only five (5) percent of the 270,000 Chinese design patent applications filed each year. Design protection is useful to block competitors who make precise copies; this should make design protection a vital tool against unscrupulous knockoff copyists.

The Coming Asian Patent Flood in Alexandria

The 700,000 domestic Chinese patent applications foreshadow large number of Chinese applicants coming to the United States in the not too distant future; parallel developments may be expected for India as well. The United States PTO should move more quickly to a “patent worksharing” regime where each national office can primarily focus its resources on its home country applicants.

Searching Chinese Patent Applications

A substantially complete prior art patent search can no longer be made in the traditional manner. Huge numbers of Chinese patent applications are becoming prior art upon their publication – and only in their Chinese version – because they lack foreign counterpart patents.