At the press conference of China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) in the first quarter of 2019, the 2018 statistics on patent, trademark, GI and IC layout design were published.

In 2018, 1.542 million patent applications on invention were received; 432,000 invention patents were granted, including 346,000 domestic invention patents, among which, there were 323,000 employment inventions, accounted for 93.3% of the total, and 23,000 non-employment inventions for 6.7% of the total.

As for trademarks, 7.371 million trademark applications were received; 5.007 million trademarks were registered, among which, there were 4.797 million domestic trademarks. As of the end of 2018, the valid domestic trademark registrations (excluding the international trademark registrations in China and Madrid trademark registrations) amounted to 18.049 million, with an average of 1,724 registered trademarks per 10,000 market entities.

As for IP protection, in 2018, there were 77,276 patent administrative cases handled, up 15.9%, among which, there were 34,579 patent disputes (including 33,976 patent infringement cases), up 22.8%; and 42,679 patent counterfeit cases, up 10.9%. In addition, there were 31,000 trademark violation cases, valued at a total of 550 million RMB. And the first IC layout design infringement case was successfully handled.

In 2018, China’s total trade in IP royalty valued at over US $35 billion. The total amount of patent and trademark pledge financing has surpassed 122.4 billion RMB, up 12.3%, among which, patent right pledge financing amounted to 88.5 billion RMB, up 23%, with 5,408 pledge financing projects, up 29%.

(Source: CNIPA website).