As of may of this year, the country's number of patents for effective inventions had reached 4. 97 million, reflecting the dynamic creativity of innovation subjects, with an unlimited potential to nurture and develop new quality productivity. On 27 june, the national intellectual property authority held a regular press conference to present work initiatives and progress in terms of improving the quality of patent applications, reviewing quality and agent quality, providing “good helper” “strong security” and “good environment” for high-quality patent creation。
Pre-trial "help" to activate high-quality applications
Improving the quality of patent applications is both a “first premise” for innovative subjects to ensure the stability of rights and the efficient use of them, and an important factor in the promotion of efficiency gains in patent scrutiny. The national intellectual property agency (inip) is strongly supporting the patenting of innovative results by continuously improving the rapid coordination mechanisms for the protection of intellectual property, by establishing and operating the national intellectual property protection centre (hereinafter referred to as the centre for protection) and by bringing policies and services such as rapid pre-trial, fast-tracking and fast-tracking to the “handing” of innovation subjects。
According to the most recent data, there are currently 77 protection centres in 29 provinces and municipalities, covering 80 per cent of the country's national high-technology industrial development areas, 18 trillion class industrial clusters and 173 trillion class industrial clusters, providing “one-stop” protections for 172,000 registered subjects, such as rapid pre-trial examinations, rapid determination of powers and rapid protection of rights。
How can the “wide coverage” of innovation industries translate into “deep linkages” in patent creation? In response, guo wan, director, intellectual property protection department, national intellectual property agency in particular, a presentation was given at the launch on the rapid pre-trials provided by the protection centre: the pre-procursion of patents is a local industrial development orientation, the selection of industries within the directory of priority industries for intellectual property protection prepared by the national intellectual property authority, and the provision of public services to innovative subjects in the corresponding industry. The purpose of patent pre-trials is to help patent applications eliminate textual errors and obvious substantive deficiencies and to improve the quality of applications. In principle, there are no quantitative limits to the “receivables” of pre-trial requests submitted by subjects that are consistent with the scope of the service industry and are important for the protection of innovative results, but the irregular applications are strongly excluded. Pre-trial patent applications will be matched by a rapid review process with the national intellectual property agency, which will reduce the authorization cycle to three months。
It was indicated that the national intellectual property agency would also strengthen cross-regional coordination of patent pre-trial resources by establishing a list of the subjects of the protection centre's precision services, enhancing connectivity and providing precision services to listed subjects。
The list will establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism to ensure that intellectual property rights are effectively cleansed and protected by the verification of the relevant subjects who have committed offences such as breach of trust and malicious actions。
Reviewing the “severe” to capture high-value results
Quality is the “strong orientation” of patent outcomes and the “lifeline” of patent reviews. The national intellectual property authority has been pursuing rigorous legal review, in particular by strengthening creative scrutiny, strengthening quality management and operational guidance in the same areas of review, promoting the coordination of the first instance, the trial, the review and the invalidity, and constantly increasing the stability of the rights granted. In the first quarter of 2025, the completion rate of patent reviews for inventions was 95. 1 per cent。
Patent applications continue to be active, and patent reviews are also required to perform “facilitation”. In response, the national intellectual property agency has continued to innovate in its approach to improving the quality and efficiency of patent reviews by adopting “demand-based + cross-cutting reviews”。
In the context of advancing needs-based reviews, according to the minister for the review of operations and administration of the patent office of the state intellectual property office, in recent years the national intellectual property agency has introduced a variety of review models, such as patent priority reviews, rapid reviews, delayed reviews and centralized reviews, and has built up a needs-based review mechanism that is “quick, slow, slow, slow-on-demand” and has achieved a shift from a “uniform rhythm” to “precision supply” while maintaining the fastest level under the world equivalent system in our patent review cycle. Between january and may of this year, the national intellectual property authority has carried out 84,000 priority patent reviews, 116,000 fast-track reviews, over 9,300 delayed reviews and 13 batches, authorizing a portfolio of high-value patents that can effectively enhance core industrial competitiveness, preserve national industrial security and promote industrial transformation。
In the context of cross-cutting reviews of practice, the national intellectual property situation has shifted to topical technological trends and areas, continuously optimizing the geographical distribution of the resources reviewed and promoting a better match between the resources reviewed and the patent application structure. At the same time, efforts have been made to create a highly qualified “multi-faceted” and high-level review team, centred on upgrading the reviewers' technical understanding, retrieval and legal application capabilities, continuously optimizing the operational training system, improving the review practice mechanism and supporting reviewers in tracking forward technology and updating knowledge。
The national intellectual property agency is also actively studying the application of large model technologies in patent reviews. “it needs to be made clear, in particular, that the application of artificial intelligence in patent reviews plays the role of auxiliary scrutiny and that the reasoning it produces cannot be directly considered as a review.” this is a clear response to the issue of the “participation” of artificial intelligence in reviews that are of concern to innovation subjects。
Agent quality for high energy ecology
The intellectual property agent's chain of innovation and review is an important aspect of creating, protecting and applying good ecology to intellectual property. According to the press release, this year the national intellectual property agency launched the “fifty-fifty-five” special planning exercise for the development of the agency sector, leading it to a professional, market-oriented, internationalized and efficient approach。
Governance is about better development. For many years, the national intellectual property authority has been carrying out a “blue sky” campaign targeting the proxy industry, which has been promoting its integrity. The director of the department for the promotion of the application of intellectual property rights of the national intellectual property agency, wang pei-champ, highlighted the importance of integrated governance in this year's blue sky initiative, which has introduced a number of new initiatives in four areas, namely, cleaning up the market order, highlighting integrated approaches, strengthening advocacy and guiding industry self-regulation. For example, the centralization of institutions that do not meet licensing requirements, the centralization of unregulated solicitation operations, the strengthening of policy guidance, the regulation of tendering, the deepening of credit and co-regulation, and the promotion of a list of prohibited trade practices by patent-mark agents are examples. Phased progress has been made on several fronts。
Industry self-regulation helps improve the quality of patent agents. The secretary-general of the all china patent agents association (hereinafter referred to as the association of agents) zhao jianjun made a presentation at the launch, in which the patent agents industry has continued to grow in recent years, with an invention patent agent rate of over 94 per cent. As an industry organization, the association of arbitrators insists on strengthening industry guidance and self-regulation, working in partnership with government regulation, promoting quality awareness and service capacity enhancement and promoting high-quality development in the patent agency industry。
It is a matter of concern that the national intellectual property agency, which directs the association of arbitrators, is in the process of selecting a pool of patent agents with a good creditworthiness, a high level of business performance and an established duty of industry self-regulation, which will facilitate the accurate matching of the agency with the subject matter of the filing, in conjunction with the list of precise services of the intellectual property protection centre. It was stated that the association of arbitrators would conduct an objective evaluation of the needs of innovation agents, taking into account factors such as the agency's operational capacity, team of agents, credit evaluation, etc., in order to produce quality-oriented evaluations of the agency's quality and service levels. It would also serve as an opportunity to continue to strengthen positive guidance and self-regulation, guide agents to enhance their quality awareness and value their credibility, and work to provide high-quality services for innovative subjects to achieve high-level patent protection, high-value patent development and efficient patent use。
