Benjamin S. Zhang

Chinese applicants can apply for, renew, transfer and cancel all 10 businesses of Madrid Trademark International Registration online via the CNIPA's online service system.

China's total number of effective registered trademarks has reached 24.78 million, with every 4.9 market entities owning one registered trademark on average.

In Macao, trademark registration usually takes about six months, on the condition that all requirements are met and there is no opposition from third parties.

In the First Half of 2019, China received 24,000 international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), up 4.9%. The 22,000 PCT applications filed by domestic applicants logged at 2.8%.

In China, in the first half of the year, the number of invention patent applications reached 649,000, down 9.4 percent year-on-year, and trademark filings numbered 3.44 million, a decrease of 4.1 percent over the same period last year.

China currently holds more than 22.74 million effective trademark registrations, ranking first in the world, with an average of one valid trademark per 5.2 market entities.

China completed 3.52 million trademark registration reviews in the first half of this year, up 67.8 percent year-on-year, according to the 11th China Trademark Festival.

In the first half, 3,515,000 applications for trademark registration were filed in China, up 67.8%.

China's comprehensive IP development index reached 257.4 in 2018 (100 in 2010), an increase of 17.9% from the previous year.

In 2018, China accepted 55,000 international patent applications filed under PCT. As of the end of 2018, China has owned 8,381,000 valid patents, with 10,000 population holding 11.5 invention patents. In 2018, technology contracts signed totaled 412,000, valued 1.7697 trillion yuan and up 31.8% over 2017.

China Courts at all levels accepted a total of 334,951 IPR cases in 2018, up by 41.2 percent from the previous year, according to the court, which released the white paper - Intellectual Property Protection by Chinese Courts in 2018.

As of the end of 2018, the grants of invention patents in China amounted to 1.602 million.

In 2018, CNIPA received 55,000 PCT applications, up 9.0%; 52,000 of which were from local users, up 9.3%.

China National Intellectual Property Administration handled 667,000 patent applications for industrial designs and more than 8 million filings for trademarks in 2018.

In 2018, 16 IPR cases were handled, and 10,066 batches of goods alleged of IPR infringement were detained, totaling 29,400 items of goods and up 25% year on year by Beijing Customs.

In 2018, Beijing Higher People’s Court heard 1341 patent-related cases; handled 14,061 trademark-related cases; the role of IPR judgement in guiding and safeguarding the cultural innovation should be exerted. 38,378 cases of copyrights were closed.

According to the statistics by CNIPA, Guangdong ranked the national first in terms of international PCT appliation, considering its 253,000 applications for the whole year in 2018.