CHINA NATIONAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ADMINISTRATION
Since the restructuring in 2018, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has realized collective and unified management of patent, trademark, appellation of origin and geographical indication, and layout design of integrated circuits, with its efficiency significantly improved. The restructured CNIPA is responsible for formulating and implementing China's national IP strategies, protecting and promoting the utilization of IPRs, examining and registering IP applications, making administrative adjudications, establishing an IP public service system and coordinating foreign-related IP affairs.
In recent years, CNIPA upholds the underlying principles of pursuing progress while ensuring stability. Focusing on high-quality development, it has promoted the creation, protection and application of IPRs, and strengthened IP protection jointly with other countries. In the first half of 2020, CNIPA accepted 683,000 invention patent applications, 4.284 million applications for trademark registration, and 5,176 applications for the registration of layout designs of integrated circuits; approved the registration of 364 geographical indications; accepted 29,500 PCT international applications; received 3,875 applications for the Madrid System international registration from Chinese applicants; and reduced the examination period of high-value patent to 15.2 months, with the examination period of trademark registrations averaging out at 4.5 months.
In 2019, China’s import and export of IP royalties totaled USD 40.98 billion, and its total amount of patent and trademark pledge financing reached RMB 151.5 billion. China rose to 14th in the Global Innovation Index 2019 and 31st in the Business Environment Report 2019 released by the World Bank, with its Social Satisfaction with IP protection rising to 78.98 points. As the end of June 2020, the number of CNIPA's PPH partners had increased to 29.
CNIPA always takes an active part in the global governance of IPRs, advances international cooperation on IP protection, promotes and participates in multilateral affairs and adjustment of international IP rules, continuously deepens practical cooperation on multilateral and bilateral issues, and serves innovation entities of all countries. Since 2020, CNIPA has doubled its efforts to overcome the adverse impact of COVID-19 on IP cooperation and to strengthen cooperation with IP agencies from other countries and regions. It has compiled and published associated measures taken by IP offices in the United States, Europe, Japan and Korea, etc., launched the English website of the Information Sharing Platform for Patents on Epidemic Prevention Against COVID-19, and specified the relief measures that apply to all those affected by the disease in the rest of the world. During the pandemic, CNIPA has attended many video conferences convened by WIPO to exchange IP policies with offices from other countries. It has also attended video conferences with heads of IP offices of Europe, Japan and Korea respectively, and issued the Joint Statement of CNIPA and EPO on Response to COVID-19, so as to jointly tackle the COVID-19 challenge on intellectual property and promote common development.
EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE
The mission of the the European Patent Office（EPO） is to deliver high-quality patents and efficient services that foster innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. Its main task is to grant European patent according to EPC.
Moreover, under the PCT, the EPO acts as a receiving office as well as a searching and examining authority. A further task is to perform, on behalf of the patent offices of several member states (Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands and San Marino), state of the art searches for the purpose of national procedures. The EPO plays a major role in the patent information area, developing tools and databases.
The number of patent applications filed with EPO grew by 4%, to exceed 181,000. The internal reforms implemented as part of the Quality and Efficiency strategy that prioritized examination work and increased productivity led to a further reduction of volume of pending applications. This allowed to re-orient partially the production leading to further increase of the number of granted patents to almost 138,000.
In response to users' need for timely delivery of services, EPO undertook an initiative, known as Early Certainty, to speed up the patent granting process. Launched in 2014, Early Certainty from Search aimed at increasing legal certainty for applicants by providing a search report with written opinion within 6 months from filing. The programme led to some significant improvements in terms of timeliness.
In 2019, EPO kept focusing on the timeliness of examination and opposition reduced by 3.7 and 1.7 months respectively in 2019. The percentage of EPO PCT international search reports published along with the application (i.e. A1 publications) remains high above 96 percent in 2019.
In June 2019, EPO published its Strategic Plan 2023. It presents a strategy for a sustainable of the office. The Strategic Plan provides also a clear roadmap for achieving that vision distributed over five goals. It outlines the actions and initiatives to be taken and the improvements required if we are to deliver sustainability and excellence. It also explains how we intend to achieve the five strategic goals not only on behalf of our stakeholders, but in partnership with them too.
(edited by Shao Jingjing, edited and proofread by Cui Jingsi, reviewed by sun yaman)
[warm tips] the source material is from the State Intellectual Property Office, and the copyright belongs to the original author. If there is something wrong, please contact to inform us of modification or deletion. Thank you.
One on one service for appointment experts
