Recently, China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released the "China Patent Survey Report 2021" (hereinafter referred to as "the Report"), conveying that at the current stage, China's patent transfer and transformation status remains active, meanwhile the industrialization rate of effective invention patents continues to rise. The cooperation and innovation between industry, academia and research also gained notable achievement, and the protection for domestic intellectual property has been steadily improving.
Since the comprehensive deployment of the 12th Five-Year Plan of the Central Administration, the nation has been emphasizing the steady improvement of IPR protection and IPR industrialization rate, in response to the nation’s development strategy of invigorating the country through boosting both science and education industries. To confirm the effectiveness of work deployment, China Patent Survey has been launched since 2008 and has been carried out for 15 consecutive years up to now, during which period, the survey mechanism has been continuously perfected, as the survey content has gradually covered the whole chain of professional IP industries, with strengthened highlights, which has received wide attention both at home and abroad.
Since 2016, the report has been open to the public, which not only provides scientific data support for relevant national policies, but also keep the public informed of the development of China's IP industry.
According to the report, at this stage, firstly, the industrialization rate of China's effective invention patents is steadily increasing. In 2021, the industrialization rate of China's invention patents is 35.4%, 0.7 percentage points higher compared to previous year and has been on the rise continuously in the past three years, which has been stable at over 30% in the past five years. As the main body of innovation, the effective invention patent industrialization rate of enterprises reached 46.8%, an increase of 1.9 percentage points compared with the previous year.
Secondly, the cooperation between industry, university and research efficaciously drives the patent industrialization level to boost. The survey shows that the industrialization rate of cooperated invention patents with universities as the first patent owners reaches 22.8%, which is more than seven times of the average level of universities as the sole patent owner; in the meantime, the same rate of cooperated invention patents with scientific research institutions as the first patent owners is 25.8%, much higher than the average level of scientific research institutions by about 10 percentage points. The data also shows that the average return of industrialization of cooperated invention patents exceeds the average level of enterprises by 32.5%, reflecting the great economic benefit.
Third, the overall environment for intellectual property protection in China is ameliorating. In 2021, 76.4% enterprises in China have chosen to defend their rights after encountering patent infringement, an increase of 2.5% over the previous year. The proportion of patent infringement cases in China with court-ordered compensation, litigation mediation or court settlement that exceeded 1 million yuan was 16.3%, 9% higher than that of the 2020, indicating that the cost of IPR infringement violations in China is increasing.
