There's a growing stockpile of patent filings with the State Intellectual Property Office, but the backlog should be resolved by a new prioritized processing regulation, which is scheduled to come into effect on Tuesday.

As a response to the central government's calling for an improved business environment, streamlined procedures for administrative approval, and the booming market, the Administrative Measures for Priority Examination of Patent Applications is set to reduce filers' burdens and improve the efficiency of related administrative services, said Hu Wenhui, SIPO spokesman, at a news conference last week.

Compared with the version SIPO issued five years ago, which applied only to invention patent filings, the new regulation will expand its coverage to applications for the other two types of patents, utility models and industrial designs, said Song Jianhua, director-general of SIPO's law and treaty department.

The updated version is also applicable to requests for patent re-examination and invalidation, Song added.

Other amendments include streamlined procedures and adding more fields eligible for the regulation, such as the internet, big data and cloud computing, she said.

Zheng Huifen, director-general of the patent affairs administration department at SIPO, said the office has long highly valued the improvement in processing patent filings.

SIPO has employed a third-party organization to assess the quality of its work since 2008.

Its efforts to increase its service efficiency and improve quality include founding an in-house quality evaluation panel, holding regular meetings on quality analysis, offering training in technologies, foreign languages and legal regulations, and collecting feedback from filers, Zheng added.

China has ranked No 1 in invention patent filings worldwide for six consecutive years.

The filing number reached 565,000 in the country in the first half of this year, an increase of 6.1 percent year-on-year, according to the latest SIPO data.

Some 209,000 invention patents were granted during the same period, including roughly 160,000 to Chinese filers, which has enabled the country's total invention patent inventory to surpass 1.22 million.

The average ownership of invention patents in China has increased to 8.9 per 10,000 people. In Bejing, the number is 85.9, making the capital top of the country.

(China Daily 07/27/2017 page17)